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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319982">Jewel of the Harem</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathildia/pseuds/mathildia'>mathildia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales from Netheredge [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cole/Galen, Colonialism, Dom/sub, Fairy prince - Freeform, Jealousy, Just let him live, Kidnapping, Let's go back to that d/s au quite briefly, Love Triangles, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Myr/Runi, Piff is such a simple good boy, Sadism, Sex Magic, Sex Work, Sexual Coercion, Threat of Blinding, Whipping</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:48:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>28,634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23319982</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathildia/pseuds/mathildia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A well connected whore takes a fancy to a naive young Harem Guard.</p><p>
  <i>“And,” says Jewel, “you must promise, in return for this favour, you will be mine and no one else’s. You belong only to me, soldier. You lie with no other. I will be your pet whore, your perfect sluttish dick hole, waiting for you eagerly in this tower, but you, in return, must be mine. You need no other. You know I’m the fuck of your life.”</i>
</p><p>COMPLETE</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Male Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Tales from Netheredge [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566223</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Jewel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>While <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21622381">Bright Flame</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21784669">Depravity</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22054774">His Tribute</a> all take place around the same time, this story is set 20 years later.</p><p>The stories can be read in any order.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The day Piff first met Jewel he walked into the guard house to find Fern and Mae arguing.</p><p>“Pike is too ill to go,” Mae was saying. “He cant stop puking.” </p><p>“He touched him,” Fern shrugs. “That’s why.  You mustn’t touch him. Bad stuff happens to you if you touch him.”</p><p>Mae scoffs. “Whoever heard of a whore you can’t touch.”</p><p>“Without <i>permission</i>. Anyone touches him without permission,” Fern lowers his voice. “Bad things.”</p><p>“Well, if I don’t have Pike, you’ll have to go,” says Mae. “So try to keep your hands to yourself.”</p><p>“I ain’t going. Send the boy.” Fern points at Piff, still standing by the door, not wanting to interrupt either of them while they’re going at it like this. “He’s right there. Send Piff up.”</p><p>Mae looks at Piff. “We can’t send him up there, he’s just a boy.”</p><p>“He’s 14.  He’ll be a full guard soon. All he has to do is wake him up and explain that there’s a customer. He does that all the time. You do that all the time, don’t you Piff?”</p><p>Piff nods. “I do, sir. Do you need me to tell a whore to get prepared, sir?”</p><p>“It’s hardly like sending him to a doxy’s room to tell her to wash between her legs,” hisses Mae. “It’s Prince Dia for a start.  And it’s Jewel he’s after seeing.”</p><p>“Don’t be silly, what’s gonna happen?” Fern turned to Piff. “Top of White Tower, alright. Make sure you say it’s The Prince.”</p><p>Piff does as he is told. He draws a basin of hot water and collects a bag of clean cloths and takes it to the white tower. He’s never been inside before. He nods to the guard on duty outside it and is answered with a salute and an open door. He climbs the steps to the room at the top.  When he balances the basin and knocks on the door of that chamber a sweet voice says, “Come in.”</p><p>Piff steps into a bright room, with a large window and a large bed. The drapes that hang at the window and the linens that dress the bed are white.</p><p>Jewel, the creature Fern and Mae were arguing about sits up in the bed as he enters.  The white linens fall away from his body. Piff can’t see much for a moment.  A tumble of blond curls. Skin a darker shade of gold. He can’t tell for sure if Jewel is male or female, until he turns and Piff sees the distinct outline of tits, high on his chest, but when he looks again, at the creature’s face, and he has a line of reddish gold prickles across his chin, a sharp shape to his jaw.</p><p>He smiles at Piff, rakish big, white teeth, “Hello baby soldier, are you here for me?”</p><p>Piff clears his throat. “I’m here to tell you to prepare. You have a guest, Prince Dia of Caen, shortly to arrive.” He walks across the room and sets the basin down on the dresser.</p><p>“I see. Well, tell him ten minutes. I hope that water’s hot.”</p><p>“Yes it is,” Piff says, returning to his station by the door and wondering, how does he end his sentence when talking to this being? He says, “Excuse me, but, may I ask, are you a man or a woman?”</p><p>“Is it troubling you, soldier, when you have no plans to lie with me?” The creature rises naked from bed and walks to the dresser. From behind, Piff thinks, he appears very much a man, but he is sure he saw tits. <i>Breasts</i>, Piff corrects his own thoughts. He ought to call them breasts. </p><p>There is a soft splashing noise as Jewel begins to wash.</p><p>“I ask only because I do not know whether to call you my lord or my lady,” Piff says.</p><p>“I see,” says Jewel, turning to give Piff a clear view of his thick cockstand. Piff gives a small unbidden gasp. “In that case assure you, I am all man for you, handsome.”</p><p>“Oh,” says Piff. And to stop himself staring pulls a package from the pouch in his belt. “Mae sent up some black rod for you also.”</p><p>Jewel puts his hands on his hips. “Do I look like I need Black Rod?”</p><p>Piff can’t help looking again at Piff’s dick. “No, my lord.”</p><p>“It’s not for me, soldier, it’s for The Prince” Jewel says going back to his washing. “Put it beside the bed. How old are you, little soldier?”</p><p>“I’m 14.”</p><p>“Come back and see me when you’re 15, won’t you?”</p><p>“I… Yes, my lord.”</p>
<hr/><p>Despite the work of herbalists, many babies are born in the Harem of Caen. If they survive and the mother has no family to send them to, they are fostered by the Harem and either they are pleasure trained or taken to be part of the Harem’s guard. Piff knows it was just the causal decision of a house mother that caused him to be walking the streets of the Harem in a leather breast plate rather than spreading his legs in a grey house. </p><p>There is a tradition in the Harem Guard, that each of it’s members should get to sample one of the whores on their 15th birthday, the day they also become a full member of the Guard and move to live in the large Guard House. They are given a token to take a whore on that day and then on every birthday while they are in service. And Piff doesn’t doubt that is what Jewel was referring to when he suggested Piff should return on his birthday. But when his 15th birthday rolls around, he does think briefly of Jewel, but instead finds himself slightly frightened of what a visit to White Tower might bring. So he let’s himself be taken by a rosy-cheeked girl with dark hair and dark eyes in one of the big, popular bawdy houses on Marsh Street.</p><p>Next morning, on patrol he sees that same dark eyed girl walking with a friend and her right arm is bandaged. When he enquires later, he’s told she fell downstairs and broke it.</p><p>Late that night, back at the Guard House, all he wants to do is fall into bed, but he stops, finding a note on his pillow. He unfolds the piece of paper. It says <i>I missed you, little soldier.</i></p>
<hr/><p>Two years pass. On Piff’s 17th birthday, while he’s eating porridge for his morning breakfast, Goza, his patrol leader strolls past his table and offers him his token. When Piff reaches for it, however, Goza pulls it back out of his reach. </p><p>“You sure you want this boy?” he says. Goza is all old muscle. Well-trained and hairy. But Piff has grown a foot and a half taller in the last year and he’s taller even that Goza now. Goza doesn’t scare him like he used to. Piff looks at him sourly. “I hear you didn’t even spend the one you got for turning 16,” says Goza. “Sure you don’t want me to give it someone else. How about you, Ersal?”</p><p>Piff’s bunk mate looks up from where he is shovelling porridge into his own mouth. “Yeah, alright,” he says, reaching out.</p><p>“No,” says Piff. “No. I’ll take it.” He looks Goza in the eye. “I’ll use it.”</p><p>“You’d better,” says Goza, dropping the token on the table as he walks away. “Don’t insult the place that feeds you.”</p><p>When Goza is gone, Ersal says, “You really didn’t spend it last year.”</p><p>“Wasn’t in the mood,” says Piff going back to his own porridge.</p><p>“But this year you are?”</p><p>“I might be,” Piff says, thinking, he doesn’t want anyone asking why he’s not using his tokens. Or, for that matter noticing he doesn’t lie with the whores using his own silver or their generosity like every other guard does. But he can’t help thinking about that girl with the dark hair and the broken arm, and he can’t help feeling that if he uses this token, something will bad will happen.</p><p>But there is one solution.</p><p>“Have you ever had Jewel?” says Piff.</p><p>Ersal is eating his porridge, swallowing a big mouthful. He’s attractive, Piff thinks, as he looks at his bunk mate. He has that same big generous mouth that Jewel has. That mouth that Piff has thought about, more often than he’d like to admit, for two years. Ersal says, “Jewel? Jewel in White Tower?”</p><p>“Yeah. I might take my token to him.”</p><p>“You know he’s the favoured of Prince Dia now,” says Ersal.</p><p>“Does that mean only the Prince can visit?”</p><p>“No,” Ersal shakes his head. “Just means he’s got a rich patron and can be choosy, it’s invite only now. Won’t take a guard with a token unless you’re on his list. Might be beneath him. But if you can get in, you ought to go. I hear he’s the best fuck in the Harem. I heard another guard who went up White Tower, years ago, when he still took guards, nearly got his cock sucked right off.”</p><p>Piff splutters into his porridge. But he holds the token tight in his hand and thinks about Jewel. He’d been a boy when they met, but he was a man now. A man who wouldn’t be scared of creature like Jewel. The best fuck in the Harem</p>
<hr/><p>When Piff arrives at White Tower he gives his token to a guard he doesn’t know, who makes him stand and wait while he leafs through a ledger. He turns the pages back a long way, running a finger down a list of names, until he looks up and says, “Piff, you said?”</p><p>Piff nods.</p><p>“You’re in his book. Go on up,” says the guard.</p><p>When he reaches Jewel’s room he finds it as before. The white linens on the bed look at little more expensive. And there’s a bath tub in he corner, which means someone pays coin to have buckets of hot water brought up all those stairs. </p><p>Jewel is on the bed, naked, sprawled across the sheets, even more beautiful than Piff’s memory. His sculpted body seems to glow in the sunlight through the tower window. He looks at Piff and raises one perfect red-gold eyebrow. “You,” he says, “are late.”</p><p>“Sorry about that, my lord,” says Piff. “I had some things to do.”</p><p>Jewel pulls himself into a sitting position and looks Piff up and down. “I can’t say I’m going to complain about the wait. Not when you’ve done such a wonderful job of growing up.”</p><p>“I’m taller than my patrol leader,” says Piff, then thinks that probably sounds silly and childish.</p><p>But Jewel just smiles his big-mouthed smile and says, “Won’t you come to bed then, my giant solider.”</p><p>There’s a moment when Piff pauses, thinks maybe this is not a good idea. That he should not. But he pushes it away. He is here. This creature, whatever he is, is beautiful, and, according to Ersal’s friend, the best fuck in the Harem. Why would he not. <i>What reason could there be?</i> </p><p>He goes to the bed. His leather armour creaks as he sits down on it. Jewel reaches up, takes his chin in his splayed fingers and kisses him without another word.</p><p>The kiss feels like something lights between them. The kiss makes Piff hard under his uniform.  </p><p>The kiss is sweet and deep. Jewel tastes good and his mouth is warm. The way he kisses, the way he opens his mouth, guides Piff to take him, makes Piff feel light headed. When Jewel pulls back, he whispers, “There, boy, you like that don’t you?”</p><p>“Yes, my lord,” Piff says, feeling giddy with desire. The casual curiosity about fucking Jewel he’d walked in with has become a raging need. Out of nowhere, or what feels like nowhere, he has to fuck Jewel, he simply has to. Jewel strokes his face. He knows how desperate he must look. His dick is so hard, tenting the short leather skirt he’s wearing. </p><p>When Jewel glances at Piff’s dick and wets his lips. “Oh soldier,” he says, ghosting a flat palm over it. “You are sweet and so comely.”</p><p>Piff moans as Jewel fists his hand, bunching the leather around Piff’s cock. </p><p>“And,” says Jewel, as he teases Piff’s dick. “Shall we say this is the first time? That you are a virgin? I’m sure that clumsy red-faced girl did nothing to you of note.”</p><p>Gasping, Piff meets Jewel’s eye. “It was not nothing, my lord. I took her. That girl. I fucked her.”</p><p>A sour expression passes across Jewel’s face, there and gone, but moves his hand away and he says, “When I’ve spread my legs for you, I am sure you will say you did not.” And, with that, Jewel dives between Piff’s thighs, pressing them apart with his face as he lifts the skirt and swallows Piff's cock so fast, so hard and sweet and <i>deep</i> that Piff moans and falls back onto the sheets as if every last muscle in his body gave up at once. </p><p>Jewel chuckles around his dick and murmurs, “That’s right my solider. Give it all to your whore.”</p><p>Piff can do nothing but moan and moan, as Jewel sucks him hard, up close to his peak then relaxes his throat to a tease of light pressure. He does it again, brings Piff close, then eases off. He repeats this cycle of torment a few more times until Piff is thrashing on the bed. “Please,” he breathes out, “</p><p>Jewel pulls back and looks at Piff. “I like it when you beg, soldier.”</p><p>Piff is lost, <i>panting</i>. “My friend says you’re the best fuck in the harem,” he says through a mess of ragged breath. </p><p>Jewel wipes his mouth. “Is that so?” There’s something about the gesture that makes Piff’s dick twitch. Jewel’s wide, easy mouth, lips wet from Piff’s dick.</p><p>“That’s what he says.” Piff manages, voice cracking and breathy. </p><p>Jewel reaches out and takes Piff’s dick in his big warm hand. It feels so soft and good. Piff bucks up into it, he can’t help it. </p><p>Jewel smiles. “I’m glad you liked it, soldier. But I’d hate to have you spend in my mouth when you could use my body. So now it’s your turn to use your mouth.”</p><p>Piff opens his eyes wider. “You want me to suck you?”</p><p>Jewel keeps a hand on Piff’s dick and with the other takes hold of one of Piff’s wrists. He pulls Piff’s hand close and sucks one of his fingers into his mouth. Speaking around the finger, he says, “I want you to prepare my hole with your tongue,” he says. “I want you to draw your tongue over my hole until I can think of nothing but your cock inside me. I want you to make me desperate to be taken.”</p><p>Piff takes a breath. He’s not heard of such a thing before. He says, “And then I can fuck you?”</p><p>“Then,” Jewel says, sliding Piff’s finger out of his mouth and kissing the tip, “if you do a good and through job with me, you may fuck me, handsome soldier.”</p><p>Piff’s eyes are wide as Jewel climbs up his body and rolls off it to lie next to him. He spreads his golden legs wide. Jewel is more slender than Piff, but his legs are shaped with long muscles. There’s something exciting about Jewel’s body, Piff almost feels like he couldn’t resist it if he wanted to. But he really doesn’t want to.</p><p>He finds himself crouching between Jewel’s spread legs. He finds himself pressing his tongue to Jewel’s hole. He finds himself moaning as he does it. Moaning at the way Jewel tastes there, like the earth, like the wildest deepest passion.</p><p>Jewel gasps at the touch of Piff’s tongue, gasps and reaches for Piff’s hair, drawing him in and closer. Piff thinks he must be stronger than Jewel, but it doesn’t feel that way when Jewel holds him. And there’s something about the way Jewel is moaning that makes Piff never want to stop what he’s doing, makes him want to bury his head between Jewel’s legs and lick him until he draws his last breath.</p><p>But Jewel has his own ideas. Jewel is soon pulling Piff’s head up again and reaching forward to slick his cock with a thick scented lotion. It smells like violets. </p><p>Their faces are close when Jewel, still holding him, whispers, “Are you ready, soldier?”</p><p>“Yes. Please.”</p><p>Jewel twists his hand on Piff’s dick. Piff moans with need. “Are you sure? After you’ve had me, nothing will ever be the same again,” Jewel says, darting forward to kiss him. </p><p>“I’ve never been surer, my lord,” Piff says.</p><p>“Then fuck me, soldier. Fuck your whore.” Jewel leans back, legs still spread wide and guides Piff’s slicked cock to his hole and then, with a easy press, <i>inside</i>.</p><p>Piff gasps. He’s barely working. He’s moving a little inside Jewel, but everything is being controlled by Jewel’s movements. He’s drawing him closer with his body, working his cock from the inside. Piff might be on top, be the stronger, be the one taking, but he is really just a thing between Jewel’s legs, a tool for Jewel to use inside himself.</p><p>Jewel feels like nothing he’s felt before. The heat and the tightness, and yet, he’s smooth as oiled glass. And in truth, Piff can barely remember the poor girl he fucked when he was 15. But he is sure, if she had felt like this he never would have forgotten it.</p><p>Jewel smiles his wide smile under Piff and says, “You like that don’t you, soldier. You like my body?”</p><p>“Yes, my lord,” Piff gasps, “yes I do.” </p><p>Jewel’s hands are spread on Piff’s leather breast plate. He breathes. “I like your uniform. I’m glad you kept it on. I feel like you’re some rampant solider whose taken a fancy to me on the street, dragged me into a back alley for use.”</p><p>“My lord,” Piff, begins, wanting to explain that he would never behave like that. Some guards were rough with the whores, he knew, but not him. He never would.</p><p>But Jewel touches his mouth to shush him, “No, soldier,” he says. “No, no. I am your street whore. Use me as you wish.”</p><p>And although Piff doesn’t feel like he has any control, or is using anything, he spends quickly at Jewel’s words, crying out and as he does, Jewel gasps and follows him, spattering their bellies with his own seed.</p><p>Jewel kisses Piff deeply and when he breaks the kiss he says, “You must come back next week, solider.”</p><p>“I will not have another token.”</p><p>“No matter. You will be my private guest. “</p><p>“Right. Alright.” A whore’s private guest. That was something most of the Harem Guard only dreamed of. And not any whore, <i>Jewel</i>, favoured of Prince Dia.</p><p>“And,” says Jewel, “you must promise, in return for this favour, you will be mine and no one else’s. You belong only to me, soldier. You lie with no other. I will be your pet whore, your perfect sluttish dick hole, waiting for you eagerly in this tower, but you, in return, must be mine. You need no other. You know I’m the fuck of your life.”</p><p>“I…” Piff means to protest, but somehow he can’t. He says. “Yes, my lord.”</p>
<hr/><p>Piff lay with Jewel week after week. And every time is better than the last. Jewel orders him into different positions, makes him lick his hole for the longest times, ties him down on the bed and rides his dick until Piff is starry eyed and screaming. </p><p>And Piff stays pure as Jewel, instructs, reminds him every time he leaves, and when other guards ask him why he never seems to lie with any other whores, even the ones who smile at Piff and are happy to service with him without silver, he shrugs and says he is happy with Jewel.</p><p>“Come on,” says Ersal, “a young man like you, with those thighs and that pretty face, you shouldn’t settle down too quickly.”</p><p>Piff takes a long pull from his mug of ale. “Jewel doesn’t like me to lie with others. “</p><p>“But Jewel is a whore,” cries Ersal to gales of laughter from the other guards.  “A tower room like that, not part of a house. He’d need to be seeing ten a week to keep that, even with Prince Dia for a patron.”</p><p>Piff shrugs. “That doesn’t matter to me. It’s what he wants.”</p>
<hr/><p>Piff sleeps with Jewel every week for a year.  And still, unbelievably, each time is better than the last.</p><p>A little more than a month after Piff’s 18th birthday, the King of Caen dies. Prince Dia is named as the King’s heir that afternoon. Caen’s tradition is for King’s to choose their heirs before death, although the choice is never revealed until their passing.  It is usually one of their natural born sons, although not always. </p><p>That night when Piff arrives at White Tower, Jewel has a pink flush in his perfect cheeks. When he sees Piff in the doorway he looks at him angrily and says, “I hope you’re ready to fuck me very, very hard, soldier.”</p><p>“Of course, my lord.”</p><p>Jewel is on him then, fast, kissing him in a clash of biting teeth, shoving him down on the bed and ripping off his uniform so fast, Piff has to fight back to save the buckles and clasps from damage.  </p><p>It’s quick and brutal and afterwards, when they both lie breathless on Jewel’s silk sheets, Piff says, “Are you…? What’s wrong?”</p><p>“Prince Dia was named as heir by the king.”</p><p>“I know. What does that mean? Are you now favoured of the king?”</p><p>“Yes. I suppose, but the King’s consorts are all kept in his private harem. They lie only with him. He has been to see me already. I am to leave this tower and be taken to rooms that are nothing but a prison in the morning.”</p><p>Piff knew about the King’s private Harem. The entire Harem of Caen had grown up around it. The Kings consorts and any children born to them were all kept in a tightly guarded fortress right in the centre of the Harem city.</p><p>“I do not care to be locked away, soldier,” says Jewel. “I do not care to be told who I lie with. I tried to explain this to Prince Dia, to <i>King Dia</i>, but his belief in these traditions is stronger even than my powers of persuasion. Apparently it is necessary that the King knows he is the father of any children borne by his consorts.”</p><p>“Oh,” says Piff. “Could you have a child?”</p><p>He hopes this isn’t a foolish question to ask Jewel, but truly, he feels like Jewel could do anything.</p><p>Jewel rolls over and pins Piff down on the bed. As ever, Piff marvels at the way he really feels like Jewel could be stronger than him. Jewel says, “You know, solider, I think I could, if I willed it. But truly the King does not… he does not understand me as you do, my sweet soldier. I <i>cannot</i> be without you.” Jewel kisses Piff lightly on the lips. </p><p>“I can't enter the King’s Harem,” says Piff.</p><p>“No, but I will find a way. I will never give you up, soldier, my great love.”</p>
<hr/><p>Piff never knew how Jewel kept finding ways to escape the King’s Harem, but he did. Less than a week after Jewel promised not to give Piff up, he was patrolling a quiet street when Jewel appeared from a dark alleyway, dragging Piff into a corner and offering himself for fucking, pressed breathless to a wall, pushing aside a garment that seemed to be little more than a breath of silk attached to a belt sparkling with gemstones. </p><p>After that it would happen often. There were more alleyways. Dark dirty places where Piff is dragged and expected to fuck or to lean against a wall while Jewel slides to his knees, hissing, “Mine. Kept for me, only for me.”</p><p>Once a tavern whore Piff is trying to ignore pushes back a veil to reveal she is Jewel. As time goes on, Piff can never be sure, when a hand touches him, if it would turn out to be Jewel’s.</p><p>It goes on for months until the King’s men find them in a cellar under a tavern, Jewel screaming, ankles on Piff’s shoulders. </p><p>When they are brought before King Dia in chains he barely looks at Piff when he says, “Flog the traitor to death. The whore can watch.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff spends the night before his execution in a cell in Caen’s royal palace at Whiteiron. He sits, propped against the stone wall of the cell, wrists drawn up above him in heavy manacles. It’s not a position he thinks he will easily find sleep in. Which is probably the reason for it.</p><p>He really, truly expects Jewel to rescue him. The cell he was in seemed as secure as any cell could be, but he knows Jewel has strange abilities, he knows not to underestimate what Jewel is able to do.</p><p>But Jewel doesn’t come.</p><p>Piff spends the night waiting. Arms above his head, iron cuffs biting at his wrists, and when the door scrapes open, the glimmer of torch light from the passage outside is enough to make his sleepless eyes sting and his head ache. </p><p>Pain he knows is soon to be the least of his troubles, indeed, the least of his pain.</p><p>PIff is unlocked from the wall and taken, still in his chains, to a punishment square just beside the palace in Whiteiron. Piff has never seen a punishment square before. They don’t have one in The Harem. He’s only seen racks and cages and whipping posts in the red houses, where they are meant for exotic pleasures.</p><p>On a dais overlooking the square sits King Dia with a small party of courtiers. He’s a young king, sharp and dashing. His dark hair is neat and oiled. His beard likewise. Beside him sits Jewel, dressed as a consort in gauze and gemstones. As Piff is led up onto a platform in the centre of the square in chains, Jewel looks on with an expression Piff can’t read. </p><p>Piff’s manacles are locked to a whipping frame, his arms stretched again, above his head. The muscles that were taut all night, scream again as they are forced into the same position. His feet are only just on the ground. His shirt is ripped sharply from his back, leaving him in just his boots and breeches. The sun in the square is already hot on his naked back.</p><p>When the guards move away, he hears boots on the steps up to the platform. An executioner, masked and stripped to the waist, steps around the frame to face him. He’s a big man, he reminds Piff a little of his patrol leader. They’d need a strong man for this job. The whip he holds is thick and looks heavy. Piff tries to breathe carefully to manage his fear and panic.</p><p>Piff was disciplined with the strap and the rod when he was in training, but he’s never been flogged. Ersal once went to a red house, to see what flagellation was all about and came back saying he didn’t see the point of it. </p><p>Piff isn’t sure he sees the point of it, exactly, but he is glad Jewel is here to watch his pain. Something dark inside him likes the idea of Jewel seeing how well he can bear this. How many stripes he will take with that thick heavy whip before he cries out, before he begs.</p><p>
  <i>Before he loses consciousness. Before he dies.</i>
</p><p>He thinks he could probably take a lot, more than most men. He wants Jewel to see that.</p><p>Some of his favourite times in Jewel’s room at White Tower, were the ones where Jewel roped him and hurt him. There was one afternoon, when the sun was bright through the tower window and Jewel used artful ropes, looped around his wrists and ankles so he was stretched taut over the big bed unable to even twitch. He cock was proud, leaking wet, as Jewel swung a leg over Piff’s body, seated himself on Piff’s chest, not on his cock, but in front of it, ignoring it, although it was far from ignoring Jewel.</p><p>Jewel leaned down to kiss Piff and at the same time, began to torment him. Twisting and pinching his nipples as he teased Piff’s tongue, getting him to gasp and keen into Jewel’s wide mouth.</p><p>“Yes, my handsome soldier,” Jewel breathed into Piff’s mouth, “you will hurt for me today. You will hurt and beg and take it all for me, thank me and love me for it.”</p><p>“Yes,” Piff sobbed, already desperate in the ropes. When Jewel ignored his cock it always made him crazy with desire. “Thank you, my lord. Do what you will with me. Hurt me as you desire, lord.”</p><p>With a broad smile, Jewel pinched Piff’s nipples again, pinched them white, released them red and sore, ducked his head to bite them, and when Piff felt he could take no more without tears, Jewel reached onto his night stand and produced a pair of glittering clamps, set with rubies and designed with sharp jagged teeth to trap and pinch the flesh.</p><p>Jewel bit his lip, looking at Piff. Piff could do nothing but stare at what Jewel was holding. “I like it when you suffer for me,” Jewel said. “Will you take more pain to prove that you love me?”</p><p>Of course Piff nodded. And when Jewel had asked, PIff had begged for those nasty, pretty clamps. Piff had writhed in the ropes and begged the way Jewel had taught him, said, “Please, my lord. Put them on me. I want to show you how much I will take for you. How much I love you. Hurt me more. Hurt me every way you can. Allow me to suffer for you. I love you, my lord.”</p><p>Jewel laid an open hand on Piff’s face, with other, he rubbed a thumb pad over one of Piff’s tight, painful nipples. “They will hurt a lot, soldier,” Jewel says. “You’re already so sore.”</p><p>Just the feel of Jewel’s thumb was making Piff squirm - <i>try</i> to squirm - and hiss with pain. The idea that Jewel was going to snap metal teeth onto him where he was already hurting made him burn with a kind of awful pleasure. He didn’t know that he wanted it, exactly, he wanted what Jewel wanted. He wanted Jewel’s pleasure, whatever form it took. He was good at processing pain. He knew he could take a lot without complaint. He loved it when Jewel admired his appetite for being hurt, “I want to take it for you, my lord.” Piff said through his teeth. “I want to take anything for you.”</p><p>“Because you love me?”</p><p>“Because I love you.”</p><p>When Jewel snapped the two toothed clasps onto Piff’s chest the pain was a viscous jolt of bright white that roared through him, blinding and so intense. Piff cried out, a great roar and bucked so hard the rope on his left wrist broke loose. It wasn’t until a few moments afterwards that Piff realised his cock had spent when it happened, shooting seed on himself and up Jewel’s back, although the pleasure had mixed in with everything else he was feeling, dark and grand and painful. </p><p>And Jewel was staring at him with bright wide eyes, before he fell on him, kissing Piff with a violent intensity, trapping the agony of the clamps between their body, moaning and grinding on Piff as he cried out in pain.</p><p>He wonders then, as he looks at the whip, if this flogging is another proof of his love. If this was always meant to happen. If it’s worth it.</p><p>Piff expects the executioner to speak to him. To explain the sentence he is about to carry out. Or perhaps that is not the way, perhaps a clerk does that. When Piff hears more boots climbing onto the platform behind him, he expects that, what he doesn’t expect is to find King Dia standing before him in his robes of state. </p><p>He cranes his neck around to see and, yes, Jewel is there too, standing just at the edge of his vision. A guard flanks Jewel, a hand light on his shoulder. </p><p>
  <i>Is this the moment Jewel will rescue him?</i>
</p><p>King Dia steps forward. Very close, his mouth to Piff’s ear. His voice is a nasty snarl as he says, “For a man like you, a strong, healthy man, an execution like this may take several days. I want you to know that. I want you to know if you survive the hundred lashes you take today, you will be returned to your cell to take another hundred on today’s wounds on the morning. And I will have that done for as long as it takes to send you to your grave. Do you understand, boy?”</p><p>“Yes, your majesty,” Piff says.</p><p>“No one touches what is mine. I want you to die knowing what you’ve done.”</p><p>“I know what I’ve done, your majesty. I accept the punishment. But please, I must ask, what will you do to Jewel?”</p><p>Just beyond his vision he hears Jewel make a sweet, satisfied noise. But he doesn’t react. He waits for the King to speak.</p><p>Before he does, the king runs a hand along Piff’s taut flank, then says, “Oh, you worry for Jewel. My elevated whore. Tell me, noble guardsman, do you <i>love</i> this creature of mine?”</p><p>“I do, your majesty. Forgive me.”</p><p>“I see. Do you even know what it is?”</p><p>Piff does turn his head again then. “Your Majesty?”</p><p>“No matter.” The King turns to the executioner. “Begin please. No need to wait for us to return to our seats. He’s a strong young man. This will be a long show.”</p><p>Before Piff is aware of much else, the whip hits his back. It’s heavy and the thud of it tips him off his feet. The white burn, that follows a moment later, is so excruciating it makes him grunt aloud. </p><p>
  <i>So much for taking strokes in stoic silence.</i>
</p><p>His skin is broken on that first lash. He can feel blood on his back at the second stripe, crossing the first with a vicious blow and a stripe of pain and thud he feels in his <i>teeth</i>. He tries to catch his breath before the next one feels. His hands, in the manacles, are fists. The edges of the iron are unfinished and savage, cutting his wrist as the whip twists him. The pain becomes a rhythm, becomes a blur. Becomes a helpless fall toward delirium and death. </p><p>When he’s taken down, one hundred strokes deep, he’s barely aware of anything.</p>
<hr/><p>He’s taken back to the same cell. The manacles are left on his wrists, but he isn’t fixed to the wall. He’s left on the stone floor, bare back burning and festering. If he is to be dragged back out in the morning, beaten again like that on top of his unhealed wounds, he won’t survive it. He may not survive the night.</p><p>He doesn’t know if he’s been sleeping or unconscious when he sees Jewel standing over him. He doesn’t know if Jewel is real or a dream. Even when he gets onto his knees beside him and whispers, “My soldier, so brave.”</p><p>“Jewel?” Piff tries to see him. In the dark cell he’s just a sparkle of gold hair and the gems at his throat and on his wrists. He’s either naked or dresses in very little. “Jewel. How did you get in here?”</p><p>Jewel puts a long finger to Piff’s lips to quiet him. “Dear soldier, no questions. I do not have long. I’m here to tell you that you will not be flogged tomorrow. When the guards come they will bring a healer. In a few days, if he judges you fit, the King will have a quest for you.”</p><p>“What?” Piff says, struggling to understand. <i>He isn’t to be flogged? He isn’t to die?</i> “What will happen?”</p><p>“Little solider,” Jewel says softly, and Piff can smell the sweet scent of him. “You must be brave now. You must survive this night and wait for the healer. You must live so that you will once again, spill your seed inside my body. I promise you, solider. I promise you.”</p><p>Jewel moves even closer, ducks his head and presses a kiss to Piff’s slack mouth. In a darker tone, he says. “I enjoyed seeing you under that lash, soldier. When we are together again, I will beat you to delirium for my pleasure, and suck you while your back is running with blood.”</p><p>And at that, at the idea of that, even lost as he is, Piff moans, “Yes, Jewel. Yes. Anything for you.”</p>
<hr/><p>After four days work from a healer, Piff can stand and with a care, can walk and move as he could before. He is taken from his cell to a small chamber in the palace. At a small table sit King Dia and Jewel. There is one other chair at the table, which is covered in maps and plans. </p><p>“Your execution is stayed, guardsman,” says the King as Piff takes his seat, “Because my whore here has persuaded me that you are able to complete a very important task.”</p><p>Piff nods. “I will do my best, your majesty.”</p><p>“Did a man like you ever learn history?”</p><p>“Very little, your majesty. I was trained to be a harem guard.”</p><p>“Then you should know your mission will take you to a small country called Bow. North, right in the shadow of Perpetua.”</p><p>“I know of it,” says Piff. “I have met some people from Bow before. They can do magic.”</p><p>The King smiles. “In some ways they can. Twenty Years ago the great tyrant Zagor launched a military campaign and took over most of the countries of the Nether Edge. But Bow repelled him and ended up controlling all he had conquered. Bow now governs lands reaching all the way from Caen to Perpetua.”</p><p>Piff nods. He may have never learnt history, but he knows most of this.</p><p>“Bow are a powerful neighbour. And with Calisto massing on our Southern border, we need Bow to come to our aid if we are breached. However, we have never been natural allies. We are very different places. Caen is a warm land of passion and pleasure. Bow is cold, reserved. They are a sly people, not to be trusted, many of them are of the fey. However, a connection is a must. Calisto is already raiding Argitua, and we know they have always wished to destroy Caen, the Harem, all of it, all of us, our traditions, our ways. Whoring is now illegal in Callisto. Although they used to take pillow boys aboard their ships, but fifty years of Queece’s rule has changed everything about that empire. We know they want our mineral mines on the borders we share with the Nether Edge. We know, too, that there is only one thing Calisto fears, and that is magic. And who has magic. Bow.”</p><p>Something dawns on Piff. Something he can’t quite believe. “You want me to negotiate with Bow? Me?”</p><p>Jewel laughs at that, and speaks for the first time. “The Royal Family of Bow, Queen Verne and Prince Charna have two children. The heir Princess Cella, almost twenty, and their seventeen year old son, Prince Adar. We want you to travel to Bow and bring Prince Adar back to us.”</p><p>“But why? Why not just make a pact with Bow?”</p><p>“Bow’s chancellor, Runi Assam, is said to be the cleverest man who ever lived. His work over the last two decades has made Bow wealthy and we know Bow has a plan to defend itself from Calisto. They won’t share it with us. We need to force them to do so.”</p><p>“By holding one of their royal children.” Piff shakes his head. “But that’s barbarism. That’s Calistan.”</p><p>Jewel leant forward, “You think so? When their defences against Calisto involve those children. Those children are of the fey. Royal and magical. Bred for purpose. That is the power that will save us from Calisto.”</p><p>“So you want me to kidnap the Prince of Bow?” says Piff. His back is starting to burn. Low but constant, a throbbing ache.</p><p>“We want you to bring him to us,” says Jewel. “How you do that is up to you. It need not be by force. Unless force is necessary.”</p><p>“You are a charming and handsome young man,” says Jewel more sweetly. “I have explained to the King how easily you seduced me into your bed. These skills of your could be put to good use.”</p><p>Piff swallows. “You want me to seduce him?”</p><p>“I have been invited to a grand ball Bow is throwing to celebrate twenty years since they defeated the incursion by the tyrant Zagor. It is not expected that I attend in person, but that I send a highborn Lord to represent me. That will be you. Lord Piff.”</p><p>“Lord Piff,” Piff mouths at Jewel. </p><p>Jewel smiles. “Dance with the Prince,” he says. “During the dance ask the prince to take the air with you. When you have him outside, kiss him and say why not run away with you to Caen. And, bring him to us. We will give you a ship.”</p><p>“If I talk to this prince that way, he’ll think I mean to bend him over.”</p><p>“Don’t,” Jewel says sharply. Then laughs. “Bring him back. But do not touch him. Even if he begs you to.”</p><p>Piff nods. The message is quite clear.  And the King does not seem to have noticed how possessive Jewel is over his body. “You are sending me all the way to Bow with my own ship. What if I don’t return? What if I run? I suppose if I do you will hurt Jewel.”</p><p>The King looks amused at this. “Jewel’s my property. I will not leverage him against your loyalty.”</p><p>“Then how do you know I won’t run?”</p><p>“I have sent a couple of my best men to The Harem, they will return soon with your bunk mate Ersal. I will keep him in your cell. If you don’t return in forty days with my Prince of Bow, he will take your place on the whipping frame.”</p><p>“Ersal? But Ersal never did anything. None of this has anything to do with Ersal.” Piff takes a breath. “Oh,” he says, more calmly. “Oh. I see.”</p>
<hr/><p>During the year Piff spent being pleasured by Jewel in White Tower and the 4 months he spent being dragged into numerous alleys and cellars, Jewel had told Piff many things. One of them was how he ought to dress. How to emphasise the width of his shoulders, the narrowness of his waist. </p><p>The white livery that had been supplied for him to wear to the ball had the distinct look of Jewel’s taste, with it’s structure and bright buttons and gold frogging. The white breeches were so tight that without the jacket the outline of his dick was visible through the fabric. The colour of the expensive fabric made his skin look darker. They’d even cut his hair, close to the bone in a way that highlighted his jaw and his cheekbones. </p><p>He climbs into the carriage for the short journey from the harbour at Longsight to the palace at Bright Water, heart beating hard in his guts and his ears. </p><p>The place itself, Bow’s great prize, is glittering white in the moonlight, towers stretching to the stars. The dark green sea on one side and the glass mountains of Perpetua behind it. Piff grew up in the Harem of Caen, a city of sensuality and pleasure, yet he thinks he has never seen anything as beautiful as the approach to the royal palace of Bow. The stories of how the Chancellor Runi Assam had ushered in a great golden age of wealth and beauty were clearly not wrong. </p><p>The evening begins with formal speeches and ceremonies. The man speaking on stage is, he thinks, the Chancellor Runi Assam himself. He’s looks calm and content. He is perhaps forty. Neither attractive nor unattractive, to Piff’s eyes, with a neat red beard and a thickening to his waist. </p><p>Another man at Piff’s table says to woman next to him, “Where’s his consort? Where’s Myr of the North? I want to see some magic.”</p><p>The woman says, “Myr won’t be here. He doesn’t appear at state functions.”</p><p>But the man replies, “Of course he will. If Runi’s here, Myr will be here.”</p><p>The woman looks unconvinced, but says, “What I want to know is if it’s true, about the children?”</p><p>“That’s just a rumour,” says the man he’s drowned out as Runi stops speaking and trumpets begin to play. From behind Runi four more people walk onto the stage. Piff assumes, from the way they are dressed, the crowns on their heads, they must be the Queen and her Prince Consort. Verne, Piff remembers, Verne and Charna. Charna, he notices is very handsome. But he is not the most handsome creature on the stage. </p><p>The tall girl looks just like Verne, she must be Cella. But then there’s the boy. </p><p>His skin is pure white and his hair is silver. He has a proud haughty line to him and when Piff looks at his face he feels something he has never felt, something he never even knew was possible. The boy is the most enchanting, incredible creature Piff has ever seen.</p><p>And the boy is his target, is Prince Adar.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff never understood the plan Jewel and King Dia explained to him. Just dance with the prince and then take him outside and then <i>somehow</i> persuade him to run away to Caen? How was that ever going to work?</p><p>Why would Adar agree to that?</p><p>Except that, Piff knew, Jewel seems to be able to make things work. Things seem to happen the way Jewel wants. More or less. Jewel can escape the King’s Harem to press Piff down in filthy alley ways and ride him in the dirt. Jewel can hurt people Piff lies with. Jewel can get executions stopped. Although Piff has scars on his back that say it isn’t an exact science. But `jewel is special somehow. That first time he ever saw Jewel, he seemed to shape shift. Like, perhaps he was testing out Piff’s preferences. </p><p>A question that has been drifting though his mind keeps coming back. A creeping dread. A black shadow low in his guts. Something that coils around his love for Jewel, squeezing it.</p><p>
  <i>Squeezing it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>What kind of creature is Jewel?</i>
</p><p>And how troubling should Jewel’s passion for him be?</p>
<hr/><p>The ballroom of Bright Water Palace is very beautiful. It is lit by hundreds of candles and, like everything in Bow, seems to be entirely constructed in white and silver and glittering glass. The windows show views of Perpetua on one side and the balcony and gardens on the other. The balcony is dark, lit only by braziers and the garden’s beyond have a few bonfires burning, just enough to show them off. </p><p>Piff looks around for Adar. But he can’t see that strikingly beautiful silver hair anywhere. And before he knows it, he finds himself pressed into a corner, surrounded by a small knot of men and women, who are all keen to take him onto the dance floor. He’s trying to decide if he ought to make his escape or take one of them onto the floor. But which one?</p><p>There’s a pretty blonde girl, who’s looking at him shyly. She’s small and soft looking, dressed in blue silk. Her eyes glitter and her cheeks are pink. Perhaps her. He catches her eye.</p><p>But before he can move, a voice behind him says, “I’ll take his first dance if you don’t mind, Prince’s prerogative.”</p><p>
  <i>Oh.</i>
</p><p>Piff turns. </p><p>And there’s Adar. Suddenly standing so close to him it’s awkward. Their thighs almost touch. Adar’s lips glisten like he’s just licked them and Piff can’t help imagine what it would feel like to kiss those lips. </p><p>Close to, like this Adar is every more breathtaking. His skin is very pale, milk-white, and almost seems to glitter in the light from the candles in the ballroom. He’s wearing dark green velvet, the doublet fastened high up his pale neck. The rich fabric just makes him look even more pale and ethereal. Adar makes Jewel, with his gold hair and skin and broad easy smile, seem simple. Plain even. Piff catches his breath, at that thought, horrified by what it would mean if Jewel knew what had crossed his mind.</p><p>He swallows. “Your Royal Highness.” Piff holds out hand to the prince. “It would be my great honour.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Adar, taking the hand Piff offers. “I think it would.”</p><p>Adar leads Piff to the centre of the glittering floor. He’s easily a head shorter than Piff and when Piff puts a hand on Adar’s waist he can’t help noticing how small it is, tiny like a maiden’s. </p><p>He hasn’t even thought about trying to move when Adar says with a sly smile, “You really don’t know how to dance, do you?”</p><p>Piff shrugs. “Not really. Sorry.”</p><p>No one mentioned, when the dancing part of the plan had been discussed, whether Piff actually knew how to dance. Perhaps it simply never occurred to Jewel and King Dia that anyone would not possess the skill. But it was not something that was taught to a Harem Guard. Piff hadn’t said anything, in that moment, hadn’t thought. He’d been more concerned about getting away with skin on his back and a still beating heart. </p><p>Adar raises a pale eyebrow like this is very, very amusing. “I suppose I could lead. Ridiculous as it will seem with you ten feet tall and looking like some kind of barbarian warrior they’ve sewn into livery.”</p><p>“Would that matter? If you led, I mean.”</p><p>“Not really. Not in Bow.” Adar leans forward. “A heathen creature like you would be amazed at what is permitted here, these days.”</p><p>“I’m not…” Piff begins. “I’m from Caen.”</p><p>Adar shrugs. “Oh, Caen, where they think they’re so decadent. Let me tell you barbarian, Bow makes Caen look like the Calisto Empire.” And he takes old of Piff, directing him to put a hand on his shoulder. “Now,” he says and presses forward, backing Piff deeper into the throng on the dance floor.</p><p>Piff almost falls over his feet and finds Adar's hand on his back holding him, supporting him as he pushes him backwards. </p><p>“That’s right,” Adar says. “You have to trust me. I’ve got you, just… Submit to me. Once you let go, it’ll be easy.” Adar’s pale green eyes flash and Piff feels a new stirring of lust in his obscenely tight breeches.</p><p>But Piff does let go, does manage it, and in few moment, Adar is whirling him around to some driving drums and bright fiddle music. It’s exhilarating, quite magical. He’s only had a single glass of green tonic, but he feel light headed. The dance has brought a rose-glow to Adar’s pale cheeks. He looks even more beautiful. “At least you can move as directed,” Adar says.</p><p>Piff begins, “Thank you, your highness,” breaking off almost before he’s done as the music changes and slows and without warning. A sweet sad melody plays on the pipes. With a sigh of delight Adar stops and pulls Piff’s body close. </p><p>“I love this tune,” Adar whispers, pressing into Piff. “It makes me want to fuck slowly, in front of a fire.”</p><p>One of Adar’s slim hard thighs moves between Piff’s legs. He gasps at the feel of it, at the feel of all of it.</p><p>“Steady, Lord Piff. Keep dancing with me or everyone here will work out you’re not who you say you are.”</p><p>Piff steadies his breath, “You know my name?”</p><p>“I know who you <i>claim</i> to be,” says Adar, pressing their bodies harder, tighter together as they sway and turn to the soft music. “Are you enjoying the dance?”</p><p>And before Piff can say anything more, right there, in front of everyone, on the dance floor, Adar stops dancing, catches Piff’s face in both hands and kisses him.</p><p>The kiss is deep and confident. Obviously sexual. Piff makes a small moan as Adar slips his warm tongue between Piff’s lips and is met with a soft amused sound. He <i>wants</i> Adar. He’s never felt a want this strong, like it’s clouded his brain. He thinks, tries to think, of Jewel. He loves Jewel and Jewel would be angry about this betrayal.</p><p>But Adar’s tongue is in his mouth and he want’s Adar’s tongue to touch every part of his body.</p><p>Another part of his brain reminds him that kissing Prince Adar was part of the plan. This kiss, he thinks as he moans into it again, Adar’s hands splayed, tight on his face, is permitted.</p><p>So long as it goes no further than this. Just a kiss.</p><p>But all he wants is to sink to his knees on the dance floor, let Adar bear down on his mouth, take every part of him, take every pleasure from him that he wants.</p><p>When Adar pulls back from the kiss, Piff is hard. They’re pressed so close there’s no way this fact will have escaped Adar’s attention. He gives a smug little smile, “You feeling alright there, my Lord?” he says. “I think perhaps you like me.”</p><p>“I think I need some air?” says Piff. “Shall we go outside?”</p><p>“Air? We can. And if you wish we can take <i>air</i>. Or, if you prefer, you can shove me up against a wall and fuck me until I scream for you.”</p><p>Piff has to force back another moan at the idea. Hoarsely he says, “ You’re a fast mover, your highness.”</p><p>“It’s one of my better traits,” Adar says, taking one of PIff’s hands and dragging him out onto the balcony.</p>
<hr/><p>Outside, Piff looks over the stone balustrades at the gardens lit by the little bonfires. The night sky, full of stars. “This place is beautiful,” Piff says on a breath, overwhelmed by all of it but he’s looking at Adar when he speaks.</p><p>“Is it?” says Adar, leaning up against the stone next to him. Adar has acquired two glasses of green tonic from a passing servant. He presses one into Piff’s hand. The cold glass feels good after the heat of the ballroom. “I suppose it is. I’m a little tired of it.” He takes a drink. “Tell me about Caen. Have you ever been to the Harem?”</p><p>“Many times,” says Piff. He’s still warm. He unbuttons his jacket and takes it off, lying it carefully on the stone rail, cautious with the white fabric.</p><p>Adar is looking at him. Piff’s undershirt is thin and loose at his throat, the breeches still so tight. He’s hard-half still from the dance. He knows it shows and hears the catch in Adar’s voice as he says, “They say, uh, they say there is a ruby the size of a swan’s egg there. And if anyone asks for an act or a paramour the Harem can’t supply, they get to keep the ruby.”</p><p>“Yes that’s true,” says Piff smiling, thinking of it. “I’ve seen the ruby. No one has ever won it.”</p><p>“You know, my father was nearly sent there. To The Harem of Caen. My father used to be a whore when he was young.” </p><p>“Is that where you get it from?” says Piff, surprising himself. The drink must be going to his head.</p><p>But Adar is clearly amused. “Now that is <i>very</i> rude,” he says. “But I doubt it. Don’t you listen to rumours.” </p><p>“What rumours?”</p><p>“Oh, the rumours about me are very boring.” Adar makes a gesture in the air as if he is batting these rumours away. “All true though. But no matter. It was a big scandal, you know, that my father had been a whore. So when he Great Tyrant found out, he sent him to The Harem. But Myr of North and The Chancellor managed to get him back before they’d even docked at Disran. You must know the story. They over threw him and ushered in the Golden Age of Bow and now we are very rich.”</p><p>“I knew about the Great Tyrant. I didn’t know that about Prince Charna.”</p><p>“He is very slutty, still, my father. He’s basically fucked the entire court. It would be funny but mother doesn’t like it. Poor mother. Married to that fucking slut.” Adar pauses. He looks at PIff’s mouth. Adar’s eyes are pretty. That very pale green. He says, “Are you going to kiss me?” And for all his cockiness he sounds a little needy then. A tiny bit desperate. “I want you to. And I know you want me. How about you show me.” His eyes glitter. “Force your passion on me, barbarian.”</p><p>Piff sets down his glass on the stonework. “If you wish, your highness.” He takes a small step forward, closing the gap between them. He’s hard at the though of it, which is no doubt obvious. He slips an arm behind Adar’s waist. Adar puts his hands on the stone work behind him and leans back, submitting. He looks up at Piff, lips slightly parted.</p><p>Piff leans down, bears down on Adar and touches their mouths together. Adar moans the instant he makes contact, lost a little and Piff teases him, flips his tongue into Adar’s mouth and out again, not letting him have any control as he keeps the kiss light. Jewel had often kissed him this way, made him wild for it by giving him just enough to make him desperate. He teases Adar with his tongue until they’re both moaning and Adar is writhing in his arms, crushing himself against Piff’s body.</p><p>But even while this kiss was happening, Piff’s mind was racing. Adar wants him, but he couldn’t possibly want him enough to travel with him all the way back to Caen. How was he to convince him of such a thing? And if he doesn’t, Ersal will…</p><p>He can’t even bear to think of what will happen to Ersal.</p><p>He breaks the kiss. Adar is limp, panting in his arms. “Take me over there, barbarian” he breathes. </p><p>Adar is pointing along he balcony to the point where it reaches the end of the building. It seems as if the balcony continues around, but it’s hard to tell. Further down the building the balcony is in darkness. The light from the fires in the grounds and the braziers on the balcony don’t reach that far. </p><p>“Why?” says Piff. </p><p>“I want you to fuck me the way you just kissed me.” Adar swallows. “I love being mastered by barbarians like you.” He rolls his hips against Piff’s thigh. He’s hard too. Piff gasps at the press of Adar’s dick through his velvet breeches. “So fuck me, or I’ll go find another big brute who will.”</p><p>Piff nods. He has no choice. But, he’s pretty sure that isn’t why he nods. Adar has him by the hand, drawing him into the dark. </p><p>But he needs to find an excuse. He can’t do this. Jewel will…. He isn’t sure <i>what</i> Jewel will do.</p><p>As they round the corner, Adar stops, muttering, “Oh damn. <i>Damn</i>.”</p><p>Before Piff can ask what the issues is, Adar turns, dragging him off towards the edge of the balcony where a flight of stone steps lead down to the grounds. As they turn, Piff catches a glimpse of the problem. Another couple have beaten them to the spot. In the dark he sees a figure bent over the balcony, head thrown back in pleasure. Another behind them, taking them in sharp thrusts.</p><p>As they reach the bottom of the steps Adar says, a little gleefully, “My fucking father.”</p><p>“What,” says Piff. Adar is already crowding him back against a wall in the ornate gardens. A fire burns nearby, licking Adar’s face with dancing orange light.</p><p>“My father and the Chancellor. Up there. Already grabbed the best spot.”</p><p>Piff looks up at the balcony. It’s dark but he fancies he can perhaps make out the figures fucking over it. “That’s Prince Charna?” says Piff. “Fucking the Chancellor?”</p><p>Adar as his fingers in the fastenings of Piff’s undershirt. He pulls it open. “You really don’t listen to gossip do you?” he says. He sounds amused, but a moment later he’s pressing his mouth to Piff’s chest, worshipping it. “God,” he mutters against Piff’s skin. “God, your fucking body. I bet you fuck like a stallion.”</p><p>Piff moans as Adar’s tongue slides over one of his nipples and then glides up, until Adar is stretching to reach Piff’s ear. “I want you inside me,” he says, his voice rough with arousal. Piff can feel Adar’s hard dick pressing into his thigh. But Adar isn’t done. He says, “Put me on the ground, fuck me in the dirt. Make me take it, don’t wait, take me rough, under prepared. Make me scream. Spend on my face.”</p><p>Piff growls in response. “I, I want you,” he chokes out, as Adar’s lips play over his throat. “But I can’t.”</p><p>But those lips are gone, Adar is sprawled on the ground in front of him. Piff knows he should stop, but he doesn’t. He pulls off his open shirt then moves his shaking hands to his breeches. </p><p>He’s about to open them when a sword pricks his bare back. He freezes. </p><p>“What’s this?” says a voice behind him. </p><p>Piff’s first thought it is <i>bandits</i>, but they’re in the palace grounds. These can only be the palace guard. He raises his hands, about to turn and explain bashfully that they are both simply absconders from the ball, when, from on the ground, Adar yells, “Thank god you’re here. He’s trying to kidnap me.”</p><p>“What?” Piff snaps back at Adar.</p><p>“Well,” says Adar on the ground. “Aren’t you?”</p><p>Behind him, Piff hears two more swords slip from scabbards.</p><p>Piff has no sword. His livery is something of a dress uniform, but he was told it would seem very odd to attend such an event with a sword at his waist. But he is not unarmed. He has a small knife strapped to one calf and a narrow slit in his breeches so he can get to it quickly. When he was dressing, he’d thought he might need a knife if he ended up taking the Prince by force. </p><p>There are three guards behind him. He can’t take three with a small blade, but he can help the odds. He moves fast. He ducks and grabs the blade at his calf and jabs it backwards into the guard behind him. He gets the guts and the guard goes down, sword gone from Piff’s back. He springs around and adopts a defensive posture as he rounds to face the other two. Knife in his hand.</p><p>He can’t beat two swords with a knife, but maybe he has a better option now. Crouching, he tries to grab the sword of the fallen guard from the ground, but there’s a clanging noise and he realises Adar has kicked it out of his reach. He looks around at him, angry. Adar is smiling.</p><p>And that distraction all but loses him the fight as the other two guards charge him, grab him, whirl him around. One holding him, then two. His arms are pinned. He’s helpless.</p><p>Their leader, the guard he stabbed is getting up, holding the wound in his guts and wincing. “You piece of fucking shit,” he snarls. “You’ll burn in the morning for this.”</p><p>He’s swaying slightly as he comes for Piff, squaring up to him and then punching him hard in the guts. Piff grunts with pain, doubles over. It’s a hard hit from an angry man and it takes his air. It’s followed by a swift sharp blow to his jaw that cracks something. He moans, swimming on the edge of consciousness. </p><p>
  <i>This is it. Mission failed.</i>
</p><p>He will be knocked out and imprisoned and burned. And Ersal would be flogged to death in his place. </p><p>But before his eyes close the night flashes white. </p><p>Piff is dropped by the guards holding him and falls heavily to the ground. He’s stunned. When he opens his eyes the white light is gone. Ans the guards are gone. Not gone, but not holding him, two of them are unconscious on the ground. A third, the smallest of the three, Piff can see running for the steps up to palace.</p><p>He looks around at Adar. </p><p>Adar is still on the ground too, eyes glittering, fingers extended. The white light, Piff realises, the white light came from him.</p><p>Slowly he says, “You did that. With magic.”</p><p>Adar sounds a little shocked when he says, “I, I did.” Shocked and <i>weak</i>. </p><p>Piff gets to his feet and moves closer. “Adar?” he says. “Your Highness?”</p><p>“I didn’t control it well,” Adar says, sounding weaker. “Father always says I don’t.”</p><p>Piff is near enough now to see that Adar has burns all over his hands. Burns that extend up under his sleeves, perhaps cover more of his body. “Who is your father?” Piff says.</p><p>“My real father, the one who is going to rip you to pieces when that guard reaches the palace,” Adar says.</p><p>“We need to get you to healer,” Piff says. He wants to pull open Adar’s doublet and see how far the burns reach, but he feels he mustn’t. He isn’t sure if he should even touch Adar now. “We need to go back inside.”</p><p>“You can’t take me back to the palace,” Adar says weakly. “They’ll execute you.”</p><p>“If you don’t want that maybe you should’t have told them I was kidnapping you.”</p><p>“Barbarian, you are kidnapping me.” Adar’s voice is fading. “Take me to the healer in Longsight. At Rebel’s Rest.” Then he adds. “Please. Not back to the palace.”</p><p>And that is the last thing Adar says before he passes out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff looks at unconscious Adar in his arms. He looks so young. There’s something eerily attractive about him like this. The strange white and silver boy, sleeping, helpless in his arms. In the night air he can hear distant music from the ballroom balcony above them. He’d only have to climb back up those steps with Adar to get help. </p>
<p>And if he wasn’t going to do that, if he was going to take Adar to the healer he asked for, how would he even get out of the palace grounds?</p>
<p>“Your majesty,” Piff hisses at the limp body of Adar. Adar seems to stir slightly. “Your majesty?” he says again. “How to we get out?”</p>
<p>Adar’s eyes flicked open, half-open. “Secret passage,” he murmurs. “Door. In the wall.” And he’s gone again.</p>
<p>Piff scoops up Adar’s legs and lifts him like a damsel - he doesn’t seem too heavy - and starts through the dark rose gardens and into the night.</p>
<hr/>
<p>It takes a while but he finds the door eventually, red painted wood hidden behind a hydrangea bush and locked with two thick bolts. Piff sets Adar on the ground and draws the bolts. They’re rusty but they open. This corner of the grounds is dark and quiet. No more guard patrols. No one looking for them, or the guards Adar dispatched.</p>
<p>Piff carries Adar through the door and pushes it closed behind them. It’s only when it’s shut that he realises there’s no way of opening it from the inside. The door fits flush into the wall, with no sign of a handle or any other way to get it open. Even without the bolts drawn, it’s been designed so it’s only possible to leave the palace this way, not sneak in.</p>
<p>They’re in a small brick chamber. It’s dark, but Piff can just about see a flight of stone steps leading downwards. Piff sets Adar down against the wall and goes back to the door. He leans his weight against it. It doesn’t move. The wood doesn’t even creak.</p>
<p>“You can’t,” Adar says softly from his spot agains the wall. Piff looks over, although he can barely see him in the dark. “Even you. The door’s not just wood. It’s iron inside. There’s no way back, once you’re in.”</p>
<p>Piff leaves the door and comes back to Adar. “Then I hope those steps lead somewhere.”</p>
<p>“Me too. There are three of these doors and one of them had a cave in halfway down last year. </p>
<p>“Great. Come on then. Let’s find out if this is our tomb.”</p>
<p>Adar reaches up with both arms. “You’ll need to carry me, brute.”</p>
<p>“No. If you can talk you can walk.” </p>
<p>“Not true, actually…, <i>ow</i>,” says Adar, as he gets clumsily to his feet and promptly, stumbles hard into the wall behind him. </p>
<p>“I see,” says Adar, stepping forward and scooping Adar back into his arms. </p>
<p>Adar leans his head against Piff’s bare chest. “You’re so strong,” he says dreamily.</p>
<p>PIff can’t tell if Adar is mocking him, or still in pain. He starts down the steps, settling into the rhythm of balancing with Adar in his arms. “Why did you do that? Back there. The magic. Why did you hurt yourself like that?”</p>
<p>“Why did I hurt myself to save you? Sorry if you were hoping for a flattering answer, but I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know I could. I‘ve never done anything that powerful before. Father says you get power from people you love getting hurt. Then you got hurt, so it’s obvious father doesn’t know everything.”</p>
<p>After a few more steps down, PIff says, “Why did you tell those guards I was kidnapping you?”</p>
<p>“Because if you’d told them we were fucking in the gardens, they’d have laughed, said typical Adar and made us go back to the ball.”</p>
<p>“But they’d’ve killed me. Did you want them to kill me?” </p>
<p>“I thought you’d win the fight,” says Adar into Piff’s chest.</p>
<p>“Against three armed men.” Piff hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but it bounces off the brick walls of the staircase.</p>
<p>Adar laughs. “Yes, my brute. I don’t know… I was perhaps a little overcome with lust. But you look like you can handle yourself.”</p>
<p>“I <i>can</i> handle myself.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m not sure because I did have to save you.”</p>
<p>“There were three armed men.”</p>
<p>Adar tips his head back and looks into Piff’s eyes. It’s still dark, but Piff’s eyes are adjusting and he can see the dazed glitter of Adar’s big pupils. “How many armed men can you defeat then?”</p>
<p>“Are you planning to set any more on me?” </p>
<p>“Maybe. How many?”</p>
<p>Piff thinks for a moment. “I could probably defeat one armed man if I was unarmed. Two with a lot of luck.” </p>
<p>“Ooh. So romantic. And tell me brute, how many <i>unarmed</i> men can you bring down with your bare hands?”</p>
<p>Adar is getting heavy, walking down hundred of steps carrying him is getting harder and harder, but despite this, Piff smiles in the dark. “Did three once,” he says, allowing himself the boast. Thinking of a tavern brawl he’d had to break up without back up. They’d been big men, all three of them, even if they were drunk. </p>
<p>“Three,” Adar coos. “I hope you use some of that brutish strength when you finally fuck me. I hope you use your big brute dick to pound me raw. Use me as a fucking hole, you cruel bastard. Oh, I hope I scream as you force my legs wider. I hope I can’t walk. I hope I feel you for days.” Adar’s croaky voice is thick with lust. “I’m dying for you, my big brute. I hope not literally.”</p>
<p>Piff grunts, swaying on the steps. “Don’t, don’t talk like that while I’m carrying you, your majesty.” But he’s thinking, God, he nearly had, in that garden. He’d nearly let himself. But Jewel couldn’t know that. Could he? As Piff takes the next step his foot lands heavily, finding no step there. He topples slightly into the wall, holding Adar carefully. They’ve reached the bottom. And there is a door.</p>
<p>A door that, thankfully, has a handle and is not bolted. It opens onto a beach. Piff carries Adar over the rocks and sets him down on the sand. He can hear the sea, but not see it in the inky black. The tide is out.</p>
<p>Adar sits up. “Longsight harbour is about a mile that way. We can follow the shoreline.”</p>
<p>Piff looks. He can see the lights. It isn’t far. And in that harbour, his ship, his route home.</p>
<p>With Piff’s help Adar gets to his feet.</p>
<p>“Can you walk?” says Piff, letting Adar lean on him. Piff hopes he can. He doesn’t think he can carry Adar further without some rest.</p>
<p>“Yes. I can manage this,” says Adar, but he leans heavily on Piff as they go.</p>
<p>Adar seems too tired to talk and walk at the same time and Piff finds he is flagging too. So they walk in silence along the beach. Piff thinks about those burns on Adar’s hands and the way they seemed to extend up inside his sleeves.</p>
<p>Adar could do magic? Wasn’t that a rare skill? Did other people know the Prince of Bow could do magic? Did King Dia know? Was that the real reason he wanted Adar? Adar had said his father had taught him magic? What did that mean? That Prince Charna had taught it. Piff knew little of Prince Charna but it seemed like there was little to know. </p>
<p>On the balcony there had been a couple fucking in the dark. Piff had only seen them briefly, but Adar had said it was The Chancellor and his father. And the figure fucking Runi Assam in the dark hadn’t been Prince Charna. </p>
<p>So, it appears, Adar calls two different men father. Piff has heard of such things. It’s not uncommon in the Harem for someone’s parentage to be unknown. Piff has no idea who his own father is. His mother he knows, is one of the women in the Frog Lane Red House, but he’s never met her. </p>
<p>But is such uncertainty possible for a prince?</p>
<hr/>
<p>Rebel’s Rest is a tall wooden building on the dock at Longsight. The sign promises rooms and board. Another sign underneath offers healing services. <i>Mr Galen, by appointment. </i></p>
<p>Piff pushes open the door and helps the barely conscious Adar up the steps. Out of the night air it’s warm in the tavern, candlelit and empty. But a man stands behind the bar. His smiles glitters in the dim room. Piff half-carries Adar and half collapses with relief. “Are you the healer?” he says, breathless.</p>
<p>Close up the man behind the bar is older than Piff first though. He’s handsome, but there are thin lines around his eyes. He must be past forty. “Not me,” he says, brightly. “But I can call him.” He turns around, and opens a door into a back room. “Galen,” he calls through it. “Galen, you free. Business.”</p>
<p>Piff looks at Adar, limp in his arms. His eye are closed. He looks worse than he did on the beach, as if now they’re at the healer he’s stopped trying. He looks half dead.</p>
<p>“Sir?”</p>
<p>Piff looks up. Another man stands in the doorway. He’s tall, with light coloured hair, blond fading out to grey. </p>
<p>“Mr Galen?” says Piff. “Can you help him?”</p>
<p>Galen walks around the bar counter to where Piff is holding Adar. It takes him a less than a moment to spot the burns covering Adar’s hands. “Magic?” he says. “He a magic user?”</p>
<p>“I think so.”</p>
<p>Galen leans closer and pulls open Adar’s doublet. Adar rolls a little in Piffs arms and Piff gasps. The skin on Adar’s chest is even paler than the skin on his face, starkly white. And that skin is covered with burn marks and blisters. </p>
<p>“Will he…” PIff swallows. “Will he survive?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” says Galen. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Carefully he takes Adar’s weight from Piff, draping an arm over one of his own shoulders. “I’ll take him into the back and dress those wounds. I have some salves that may help him heal.”</p>
<p>Piff lets Galen take him. As he watches he says quietly to himself. “I should have taken him back to the palace.”</p>
<p>The other man, the slightly younger one, is still behind the bar. He smiles at Piff. “Ale?” he says.</p>
<p>Piff sees no reason not to nod.</p>
<p>When the man passes Piff the cup of ale he says, “I’m Rask. You look like you’ve had a long night.”</p>
<p>Piff shrugs and takes a drink. “I guess.”</p>
<p>“We have pillow rooms, if you need to relax.”</p>
<p>Piff lets that thought settle. The man behind the bar is very handsome with his wide smile and dark hair. Is he the pillow boy too? That brief moment in the palace grounds when he had Adar on his back, legs open and eager for him, still burns somewhere inside him. How pleasant it would be right now to go upstairs with this easy, charismatic man and bend him over, open him up, slip his tongue and then his dick into him, take a little pleasure.</p>
<p>Piff takes a breath. “I don’t,” he says. “I don’t do that.”</p>
<p>Rask raises an eyebrow. “You don’t? You Calistan?”</p>
<p>“No. I’m from Caen,” Piff says, quirking a smile. The idea that he could ever be someone from Calisto seems distinctly amusing.</p>
<p>Rask tips his head back and makes a knowing nod. “Oh. You know. I met Galen working in The Harem. The Grey House on Rose Street. Do you know it?”</p>
<p>The wonder of this makes Piff smile. There aren’t many Grey Houses. If Rask met Galen when he was working in one, he must have been a young boy then. “Actually yes. I do. I know it well.” </p>
<p>Rask has his own cup of ale. He takes a drink from it. “Funny,” he says, “to think that place is still there. It’s been such a long time. So can I ask what a harem guard is doing with Prince Adar covered in magical burns?”</p>
<p>Piff’s breath catches. “Ah,” he says. “I wasn’t sure how recognisable he was.”</p>
<p>“How…” Rask looks at him as if this is the funniest thing he’s heard in a while. “The prince? Of course he’s recognisable. You didn’t think to disguise him?”</p>
<p>“I was worried…” Piff begins, then says, “No. No I didn’t.”</p>
<p>“I’m not going to tell the palace, if you’re worried. We’re discreet here. Known for it. Galen heals anyone and keeps their secrets. I’m certain Adar wouldn’t be with you if he didn’t want to be.”</p>
<p>Before either of them say much more Galen comes out of the back room. “How is he?” Piff says quickly.</p>
<p>“He needs to sleep. I think he’ll heal. I’ve give him a draft and put him upstairs.”</p>
<p>“We need to go. Tonight. I have a ship.”</p>
<p>“He needs to sleep first,” says Galen. “But you can join him if you wish.”</p>
<p>“I’ll show you up,” says Rask with a wink.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The room is small. Adar is propped up on pillows in a large wooden bed. He looks small and pale. His chest is swathed in bandages. But he still reaches out his arms, “My barbarian brute,” he says, beaming.”Come to bed.”</p>
<p>Piff is glad to see that. At least no one here will think Adar is being abducted. </p>
<p>He crosses the room quickly and embraces Adar, who finds his ear and says, “Lie with me. Lie with me and I promise not to run away in the night.”</p>
<p>“I can’t.” Piff pulls back. “You are recovering from you injuries.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine. I feel fine.” Adar looks past Piff to Rask at the door. “How about you?” Adar says, you’re very handsome. “Will you lie with me? It seems my paramour is too concerned for my recovery.”</p>
<p>“I’m not your…” Piff begins, but he stops when he realises he is speaking to no one.</p>
<p>“Do you require a pillow service, you majesty?” says Rask, from the door.</p>
<p>“Perhaps. I like older men,” says Adar, sounding a little slurred, but somehow he is smirking at Rask.</p>
<p>Rask smirks right back. “I like princes.”</p>
<p>“Sounds like we’re a match made in heaven. So you’re the pillow boy?”</p>
<p>“Been one for more than thirty years, you majesty.” Rask leans in the doorway in a way that makes him look very attractive.</p>
<p>“You must have started young,” Adar says, slurring a little.</p>
<p>“At 13. Not really so young. Galen, your healer, went into pillow training at 9.”</p>
<p>“So he has nearly 50 years experience. He must be an incredible fuck.”</p>
<p>“He is,” says Rask. “I’m better.” </p>
<p>“Are you?”</p>
<p>“Spread your legs and find out.”</p>
<p>“I think that’s enough, Rask,” says Galen, appearing behind Rask and putting a hand on his shoulder. “My patient needs to sleep. I’ve given him a draft he won’t be awake much longer.”</p>
<p>Piff looks at Adar, eyes already drifting closed against the pillows.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff wakes up on the floor beside Adar’s bed. The room is quiet. Adar is breathing softly, whatever Galen gave him still holding him deep in sleep. </p><p>From the light through the window, he thinks it’s late afternoon. They’ve slept nearly all day. Piff stumbles up to his feet, stretching. His white uniform is draped over a chair. It’s stained and torn enough to be ruined. He’s just in his undershirt. But there are more of his clothes on the ship. And he’ll have them soon. When night falls, that would be the best time to leave. </p><p>Piff tries not to think about what’s going on at the palace on Brightwater, how Adar must have been missed by now, the guards who Adar had injured, even killed. They’d be looking for them. They’ll be lucky to get away after such a long delay. He pushes away any thought about how wildly off track his mission has gone and he glances over to Adar’s face. Sleeping he looks so beautiful. </p><p>More beautiful when he isn’t talking, Piff thinks as he slips out of the room and goes in search of a privy.</p>
<hr/><p>On his return there is a man standing in the hallway between him and their room. The hallway is gloomy, but Piff can see the man is strongly built, wiry, and handsome, older than Galen, dark hair grey at his temples. </p><p>He looks at Piff. “You are Captain Piff of Caen?”</p><p>Piff nods, wishing he’d taken a weapon with him to piss. “Can I help you, sir?”</p><p>The man lifts his chin. “I can indeed help you. I already have. This is my place. My tavern.”</p><p>“Yours?” Piff relaxes a little. “I thought, Mr Galen…”</p><p>“Galen is my lover.” The man says this proudly. It’s a little sweet. The man is not sweet. He seems rough, hardened by something, but when he says that, Piff can tell he’s delighted by the fact Galen belongs to him. </p><p>Piff feels a strange pang of jealousy. Not that he wants Galen for himself, nothing like that, just the idea of it. That this man lives simply, pleasurably with his love. Could he ever have that? He is sure he never could with Jewel.</p><p>The man must have thought Piff was thinking about something else because he says, “Did you think Galen was with Rask? Rask is just his friend.” And when he says that, Piff thinks, perhaps, things are not so simple. And the man he is speaking with looks a lot like Rask, now Piff thinks of it. They could be father and son.</p><p>Something tells him they are not though. </p><p>The man says, “My name’s Cole. This is my place and I want you to know you’re safe here. In truth, that’s down the Galen. Galen insists we protect whoever comes to us for help.” Cole smiles. “Galen is a much better man than me, as I’m sure is obvious. But he once helped me and protected me when I needed it and didn’t deserve it, so I owe it to him to follow his code. If I thought you were taking that boy from the palace against his will, I would, perhaps, take more persuading to allow you to pass through, but he appears to want to be with you.”</p><p>“Yes,” says Piff awkwardly. Adar does appear to be very willing to help with his kidnap. Another thing Piff hasn’t examined in his strange quest.</p><p>“Can I ask why you’re with the prince? You know, I am sure that there are many rumours about who he is, what he is. Do you want his power for yourself?”</p><p>“His power? No, I… I’m on a mission.”</p><p>“Ah. Missions, I understand.” Cole laughs a little. “Do you know my name. Cole. Red Cole, I was called once. My last mission was the Emerald Palace Uprising in Calisto. You know it?”</p><p>Piff sucks in a breath. He might not know a lot of history, but he knows that story. “You’re Red Cole. You’re here? In Bow?”</p><p>Cole bows. “I am.”</p><p>“You nearly killed Emperor Queece?”</p><p>“I did. Although that was a lifetime ago. But for the longest time  I thought that mission was a failure. But now, I’m not sure. It is, after all, the closest anyone has ever got. Tell me about your mission, Captain.” Piff understands that this is a demand, the price of Cole’s co operation.</p><p>“I know you know I’m not a Captain, that I’m a harem guard. I’m on a punishment mission,” says Piff, wondering only after he’s started talking if he should have lied. He isn’t sure. There’s something compelling about this bright eyed man. He has an easy charisma. It’s hard not to tell him things. And so, he tells him all of it. Jewel. Being caught with Jewel by Dia. “I was charged to bring Adar back to Caen. To King Dia,” he says. “And if I don’t, my friend will take my lashes.”</p><p>“So it is Dia.” Cole says. “Then Caen need to reinforce against Calisto. The war with The Genzies is over. Everyone knows Calisto will move on Caen when they are strong enough. Caen’s only hope is to ward itself. And the only way to get ward is to work with Bow.”</p><p>“Yeah,” says Piff. “I guess so. I don’t know why Dia wants Adar. I was not told, but I suppose it could be that. To get Bow’s help with wards. Could Bow protect Caen too?”</p><p>“Perhaps,” says the older man. “And Adar follows you just because you have a pretty face. I suppose that is unsurprising, considering his reputation.”</p><p>“I think he wants me to fuck him,” Piff says.</p><p>“Yes. I am sure he does.”</p><p>“But I can’t. I don’t know how but I’m sure Jewel will know. And I, I don’t think that would be good.”</p><p>“I am sure it would not,” Cole says, darkly. “If the creature that commands ownership of you is exactly as you described, I’d do exactly as it says.” </p><p>“Do you know what Jewel is?”</p><p>“I’m not sure, but, be very careful.” </p><p>“Please. Why?”</p><p>Cole looks like he might say nothing, but then says, “I’ve heard a lot of stories about The Harem of Caen, about the kinds of creatures that make a home there. Things that aren’t human, things that find it <i>amusing</i>.” </p><p>“What? Like what? What is he?”</p><p>Before Cole can reply the door opposite him opens. Adar is there, half-naked in the door way, in just a thin shirt. He looks sleepy, still, but he smiles and softens when he glances at Piff. “You trying to steal my man, grandfather?” he says to Cole. “I don’t blame you. He’s quite  a treat for the eyes isn’t he?”</p><p>Cole glances at Piff and back to Adar. “Don’t worry, your highness. I wouldn’t touch him for fey fortune.” </p><p>And before Piff can ask anymore, Cole is gone.</p>
<hr/><p>They head for the harbour as night falls without incident. Adar is walking easily now, strolling and making jokes. Piff has persuaded him to wear a cloak, after Rask found one for each of them, which at least disguises his hair and hides his face, but the way he’s acting, Piff expects to be hauled away by palace guards any second. His sword hand twitches, empty, all the way to the boat.</p><p>However they make it aboard and even out to sea without a single problem. Before midnight Longsight is far behind them and Adar is tucked up in bed in the captain’s cabin. </p><p>Galen has given Piff a tonic for Adar that promotes healing. He told him to give Adar as much of it as he would drink.</p><p>“He’ll complain. It is quite foul.”</p><p>Piff had nodded. “Then he will, indeed.”</p><p>“I should also tell you, it has a small amount of Tiger’s Eye in it. It’s only a small dose. But Tiger’s Eye has more effects than the ones it is known for. It shouldn’t make him too lustful, but the dosage can be tricky, be careful.”</p><p>When Piff hands Adar the bottles of tonic from Galen he says, “I ought to tell you…”</p><p>Adar already has it to his lips and is drinking down a mouthful. He pulls the bottle away and says, “That it tastes like shit and seawater?” He splutters and takes another sip.</p><p>“No, just. Galen said drink as much of it as you can. But it has Tiger’s Eye in it.”</p><p>Adar pulls the bottle away from his mouth again. “What? You’re drugging me, you <i>brute</i>. You’re plying me with a rape drug. As if kidnapping me wasn’t bad enough.” Adar laughs and takes another swig from the bottle. </p><p>“I assure you, I am not drugging you,” Piff says taking the tonic bottle from Adar. It’s half empty. </p><p>“But you are,” Adar raises an eyebrow, “<i>kidnapping</i> me?”</p><p>“Yes. You know I am. As far as I can tell you’re pleased about it.”</p><p>Adar leans back on the pillows. “It’s good to be wanted. But, tell me now, brute. Now I am thoroughly in your clutches, to what purpose do you drag me away from my home and all I love? Will I end up in Caen your helpless love slave, chained to your bed for idle use day or night, shaved and scented, oiled and plugged, wanting for nothing but the touch of my master’s rough hands?” Adar pouts. Its pretty enough that Piff feels his cock stir.</p><p>“Nope,” says Piff. Cautiously, he sits down on the edge of the bed. He’s wearing his own clothes at last. No tight dress livery, no scratchy borrowed cloak, a shirt and breeches that fit him and are comfortable. Adar is still in his loose shirt. It’s very thin and barely fastens. Through it his skin seems to glitter silver in the boat’s candles. His pale hair is loose around his shoulders. His eyes are like ghost glass. The sight is enough to make Piff swallow when he says, “You’re not for me.”</p><p>Adar looks confused. “What?”</p><p>“I’m not kidnapping you for myself. King Dia wants you. The King of Caen.”</p><p>“Oh.” Adar’s expression is confused.</p><p>“It’s not just a lowly harem guard kidnapping you. It’s the king himself.”</p><p>“Oh,” Adar says again, then he smiles. “I knew you weren’t a real lord.”</p><p>Piff laughs. “What gave it away.”</p><p>“So tell me about this King? Is he very handsome. Am I to be forcibly wed to him?”</p><p>“I was sent to fetch you as a punishment. I don’t know why he wants you.”</p><p>“A <i>punishment</i>,” Adar’s eyes light up again. “Whatever did you do? An upstanding man such as yourself.”</p><p>“I,” PIff looks down, “lay with one of his consorts.” He meets Adar’s eye. “He wanted to beat me to death for it. He got about halfway there. Do you want to see?”</p><p>Before he’s really thought about what he’s doing PIff has stood and turned around, pulled up his shirt to show Adar the scars on his back. He knows they look shocking. He shouldn’t, he is half certain, have survived what it took to place them there. He is, and he isn’t sure how he’d ever explain this, he is <i>proud</i> of them. He took them for Jewel, they represent his love for Jewel and Jewel deserves that pain and more from him. </p><p>Adar takes a breath when he sees them. It’s a nice sound. He likes that too. He likes Adar seeing them, gasping at the sight of them. Piff sits back down on the bed, his back to Adar and when Adar touches his scarred back he feels himself let out a breath that he might have been holding for hours. </p><p>“Did it hurt when they beat you?” Adar says in a breathy whisper.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Did you scream?”</p><p>“Until I couldn’t.”</p><p>“I wish I’d seen it.”</p><p>“I wish you had too.” Piff means it.</p><p>Neither of them speak for a moment</p><p>“So,” says Adar, breaking the spell, “You’re a Harem Guard. So you must be the son of a whore.”</p><p>“That I am,” says Piff.</p><p>“So am I.”</p><p>“The Queen of Bow is a whore?”</p><p>Adar still has a hand on his back. It shakes a little when he laughs. Piff doesn’t want that hand to ever move. “Silly. My father. Prince Charna. I told you.”</p><p>“Charna’s not your father though, is he?”</p><p>“Oh? You know Runi Assam is thinking of making it a crime to say that.”</p><p>PIff turns around, finally, to look at Adar. “Runi Assam? When your real father is Myr of the North, the magician, the fey, who is <i>married</i> to to Runi Assam. What does he even think about such a thing?”</p><p>Adar looks like this is delighting him. “It was Runi Assam’s idea.” His eyes flash like diamonds. “Come on you’re from Caen where the king breeds offspring from as many women as he can keep in his private harem. Is this so different?” </p><p>“They bred you, purposely? From the queen and the magician? But wouldn’t that, in Bow, wouldn’t that affect the royal line.”</p><p>“Ask Runi, but I’m not the heir. Cella is the heir and as far as I know Prince Charna is her father. And really, barbarian, if you have any more questions you’ll have to earn the answers.”</p><p>“Earn them?”</p><p>“You’re already half naked in my bed. You gave me Tiger’s Eye earlier. The least you can do is kiss me without making me beg.”</p><p>
  <i>Kiss him.</i>
</p><p>Piff’s mind is cloudier than than it should be and he does have more questions and he very much wants to kiss Adar, who’s mouth he finds he is staring at.</p><p>So he does. He turns his body and takes Adar’s chin and kisses him easy and good, slips his tongue into Adar’s mouth as Adar goes soft under him.</p><p>Adar makes a soft moaning noise as he lies back onto his pillows, hands on Piff’s shoulders, drawing him down too, tugging Piff over him until Piff is covering Adar with his big body, pinning him in place. Adar stretches his arms above his head and crosses his wrists on the pillow above his head, offering himself like he’s bound and helpless, the way he described himself, a love slave in Piff’s bed. Piff swallows and Adar says, “Rip my clothes off, barbarian. If you’re going to hand me over to this king as a prize, won’t you at least ravage me first?”</p><p>Piff is astride Adar’s body. He’s hard. It’s probably visible in his breeches. He’s shirtless and Adar is half naked under him. He wants him so much his head is spinning. “I…” he starts, “I can’t.”</p><p>“Of course you can. You’ve kidnapped me. I’m completely at your mercy. Look how weak I am compared to you.”</p><p>“Weak?” Piff scoffs. “I saw what you did to those guards.”</p><p>“I don’t have any power now. Look.” Adar raises a hand and shakes it as if trying to shoot magic from his fingers. Nothing happens. </p><p>“I still… I can’t. I’m just to fetch you. I must not fuck you. Why are you so keen to be kidnapped anyway?”</p><p>Adar squirms prettily on the bed. His wrists still crossed above his head. He jerks his hips. “Fuck me hard, brute and I’ll tell you.”</p><p>Piff shakes his head. “I told you. I can’t. I can only kiss.”</p><p>Adar looks like he’s thinking. “Then, let me suck you.”</p><p>“Please. You Highness, I…”</p><p>“Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t start calling me that. Come on, let me suck you. I assure you I know how to give as well as receive. Didn’t I tell you, my father was a whore.”</p><p>“He’s not your father.”</p><p>“He raised me.”</p><p>“I refuse to believe you royal father taught you to suck dick.” Piff laughs.</p><p>Adar laughs too. “Let’s see.” </p><p>Adar moves fast, hands on PIffs shoulders he flips the pair of them over on the bed. Piff gasps, because that was a strength he had no idea Adar had. “My prince…” he begins, but Adar is sitting up on top of him, slipping down his body, fingers digging into the fastenings of his breeches, freeing his hard cock. “Adar…” Piff pulls up on his elbows and looks at Adar, eyes lust-lidded, crouching between his legs, that unfastened shirt slipping off one pale shoulder. </p><p>Adar dips his head and touches Piff’s dick once with his tongue. Piff moans, head falling back, as Adar says, “Please. Fuck, please let me. Brute, please, I need it. I have Tiger’s Eye in me , remember you gave me Tiger’s Eye.”</p><p>“I didn’t…” Piff says but Adar ignores me.</p><p>“It’s a cruel drug, that one. I can’t… I can’t help myself.” And Adar dips his head again and lets his lips close over Piffs cockhead and glide to his root. </p><p>Piff can’t fight it. He just can’t stop what’s happening. He falls back on the bed, surrendering to the wet heat of Adar’s mouth. It feels so good. Hot, hotter than Jewel.</p><p>Put he pushes that thought away, can’t, won’t, mustn’t think of Jewel as Adar takes him, sucks him hard. Swallows his dick whole again and again. Pulls off with a wet pop and murmurs, “You handsome brute. Come in my mouth. Make me take you.” And Adar sucks him again, deep and hard and Piff comes with a shout of pleasure and fear.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning the ship docks at Disran. Jewel is waiting on the dockside, gold skin and a gold gown, gold hair blowing in the wind. Piff sees it in his face.</p><p>
  <i>He knows.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you are wondering about Cole, Rask and Galen their story is told in <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/21622381">Bright Flame.</a></p><p>And if you would like to know more about Runi Assam, Myr of the North, Prince Charna and Queen Verne, their story is told in <a>Depravity</a>.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Jewel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Piff gets close enough to Jewel, he sees there is something wrong with his eyes. Jewel’s eyes had been a rich honey colour before, but now they are gold. All gold. No white, not black. It is as if Jewel’s eyes have been replaced by pure gold metal.</p>
<p>But when Piff asks, says, “Jewel? Your eyes? Are you blinded?”</p>
<p>Jewel says softly. “Not now my little soldier. We must be discreet.”</p>
<p>Jewel takes Piff back to White Iron alone. He does not get a moment to say anything to Adar, or even to ask where he will be taken now. King Dia does shake his hand. Mutters something about a debt paying paid, and before he knows it he is in a tower room, alone with Jewel, and Jewel is <i>furious</i>. Those gold eyes flash in the sunlight. It looks uncanny. <i>Wrong.</i></p>
<p>“Take you clothes off.”</p>
<p>Jewel stands with his hand square on his hips in front of the door. He is glowing. The gold gown falls like a waterfall from his shoulders.</p>
<p>Piff looks around the room. It contains a bed, a dresser and, by the window, a large standing cage. It’s basic. The boards are bare and the walls are white. There’s a window, but they are so high up that from where he is standing all he can see is sky.</p>
<p>“What? Are we going to…” Piff frowns at Jewel. He isn’t sure if he dare do anything but exactly what Jewel wants. “What about the King?” Because he’d die next time he was caught. He is sure of that.</p>
<p>“Dia is only interested in his new toy. As I knew he would be. As I knew you would succeed. And I knew that would save you life and end our great monarch’s fascination with me. It would have been a perfect plan if you hadn’t…” Jewel stares at Piff.</p>
<p>Piff doesn’t know what to say, so says nothing. Jewel steps forward, raises a hand and slaps Piff’s face. It doesn’t exactly hurt. It shames him. It is shameful for a man like him to let a whore like Jewel hit him and do nothing. But Piff only says, “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>“Did you…” Jewel is so angry it’s like he can’t speak. “Did you <i>fuck</i> him?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Because I expressly told you not to fuck him.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t fuck him.”</p>
<p>Jewel reaches into the gold pocket hanging from his waist belt. He pulls out a small cloth and unwraps from in a small piece of black bark. He holds it up. “Do you know what this is?” Piff recognises it.</p>
<p>“Yes, my lord. It’s Black Root.”</p>
<p>“Have you ever taken it.”</p>
<p>“No my lord. I’ve never had need.”</p>
<p>“Ah, of course you have not, my beautiful boy with his perfect dick. But, Little Soldier, there are more reasons to take this than just to induce a cockstand in unwilling flesh. It can also be a devotional act.” Jewel lifts the piece of bark to Piff’s lips. “Open you mouth,” he says on a soft breath.</p>
<p>“Why.” Piff tries to speak around his pressed-closed lips. Managing to make a single muffled word. </p>
<p>“Do as I say. If you love me, you will do your penance. Open your mouth.”</p>
<p>So Piff does. Piff opens his mouth. Jewel presses the piece of root inside and Piff swallows it. Jewel seems pleased with that. He smiles for the first time since Piff’s boat docked at the harbour.</p>
<p>Piff breathes steadily. He doesn’t know why Jewel wants him to take Black Root. He desperately wants to take Jewel to bed.</p>
<p>“Now,” says Jewel. “I believe I told you to take your clothes off.”</p>
<p>“Very good, my lord.” Piff isn’t wearing much. He pulls off his loose shirt and breeches and stands in front of Jewel naked. He doesn’t think the Black Root would have had time to take effect, but he is already half hard simply from displaying his body for Jewel.</p>
<p>Normally Jewel would make an admiring comment when Piff stripped, but he just says, “Turn around.”</p>
<p>Piff turns. Jewel doesn’t mention the scars that cover his back, just pulls his wrists together behind him and ropes them together. Jewel has roped Piff before. He usually enjoys it. Right now he enjoys the fact it means Jewel is ready to take him to bed.</p>
<p>His cock swells a little. But Jewel does not take him to bed. Jewel takes him to the cage, and opens the door.</p>
<p>Piff looks back at Jewel. “What, why?”</p>
<p>“Because you need to learn a lesson, my Little Soldier.” And Jewel jerks his head to indicate that Piff should walk into the cage.</p>
<p>None of this makes sense to Piff. He understands Jewel is upset with him about Adar, but he did not fuck Adar and he has told Jewel that. And how any of this is to be resolved by shutting him naked and roped in a cage, rather than taking him to bed. But he doesn’t ask. He figures he’ll find out and he steps into the cage. Jewel shuts the door with a soft clang, draws the bolts, says, “I’ll be back shortly.”</p>
<p>And he leaves.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The black root takes effect slowly, a sickening creep as his body grows hotter, his skin prickles, his heart seems to beat harder. But none of that is really noticeable when it starts affecting his dick. </p>
<p>His dick gets hard. He expects it. That is how black root works.It gets you hard. They use it all over The Harem. But, of course, normally, that black root induced hard dick was immediately put to use. Piff has never heard of black root being used as a torment. Tiger’s Eye perhaps. The drug that make the recipient beg to be fucked and used, he has seen that put to all kinds of cruel uses, but not black root. Black root was, after all, for being lord.</p>
<p>But as he grows harder and more desperate he realises black root, with no relief is a torment all it’s own. With his wrists roped behind him, he can do nothing to aid the growing feeling of desperation. </p>
<p>After several long, awful minutes, his cock his so hard it sits flush against his belly. He twists in the ropes, but he knows ropes tied by Jewel do not move. He makes a single soft sobbing noise and leans his head against the cage’s bars. And he does the only thing he can do. He waits, in pain, for Jewel to return.</p>
<hr/>
<p>When Jewel steps back through the door, Piff moans just to see him. He wants to intensely, so exquisitely painfully to fuck him he can barely stand the sight of him. </p>
<p>Jewel leans back against the closed door. He is holding a single lit candle, it lights his face, his strange gold eyes. “Well, good evening, little soldier,” he says sweetly. </p>
<p>Piff notices then that it’s night. The sky outside the window is indigo. “<i>Jewel</i>,” he says. Just saying his name is begging.</p>
<p>Jewel doesn’t come nearer. From the door he says, “What did you do with him?”</p>
<p>Piff swallows hard. He’s not sure he can even say it. “He sucked me. That’s all.” And the thought of <i>that</i>. What he’d give for Adar’s hot mouth on him now, those lips on his dick. That soft throat.</p>
<p>“Was it good?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Piff says. He cannot help it. “Oh god, yes.”</p>
<p>Jewel walks across the room towards the cage. He stops in front of the cage and sinks to his knees. “Would you like me to suck you, little soldier?” Jewel opens his mouth a little, shows Piff the wet parts.</p>
<p>Piff can barely look at it. Jewel’s mouth is inches from his dick. Just the idea of that mouth, of anything touching his aching dick is too much. He wants it so much he feels mad with it. His cock is alive, throbbing so hard it’s like it isn’t part of him. He pushes it forward and moans, “Yes.”</p>
<p>Jewel pulls back a little from the bars of the cage. Just enough that Piff cannot reach his mouth. He licks his lips then reaches out with one finger, one finger through the bars, and runs that finger up the underside of his dick, slow, root to tip.</p>
<p>It feels like fire. Piff moans out with need, with such a need for more. “Jewel,” he murmurs, “please, it’s not enough. It burns. Jewel, please. Let me lie with you.”</p>
<p>“Are you sorry you let that fairy creature touch you.”</p>
<p>Piff cants his whole body forward closer, as if he’s trying to fuck the bars of the cage. “Yes, fuck, Jewel, god yes. All I want is you.”</p>
<p>Jewel’s mouth twists. Piff can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he’s hopeful, so hopeful Jewel will open the cage and lead him to that bed. He can see the bed. See the bed they could be lying on. See the bed Jewel could rope him to and then climb onto his cock, make him scream with need.</p>
<p>Jewel says, “I think you need a little longer. You don’t seem all that sorry.”</p>
<p>“Jewel, I am. Please, I am sorry.”</p>
<p>But Jewel has turned away. And Jewel is gone.</p>
<p>Piff screams.</p>
<p>When Jewel is gone Piff presses his forehead to the bars. His dick feels like it’s going to explode off his body if he can’t get release soon. Even his nipples are so hard they’re painful.</p>
<p>He thinks of Jewel. Jewel’s body. The way it feels to be inside Jewel’s mouth, inside Jewel’s body. He moans softly as he thinks it. He shouldn’t. It makes it worse. But when he makes himself stop thinking of Jewel he thinks of Adar. Adar’s mouth had been as good as Jewel’s, a little hotter perhaps. </p>
<p>Even through his haze of arousal, his painfully hard dick, he thinks then, what did King Dia really want with Adar? If Dia was so distracted by the arrival of Adar he cared not for him and Jewel, did that mean he planned to lie with Adar? Would he take him unwillingly? Would Adar be unwilling? For a King? Piff finds himself hoping Adar might be. Hoping that Adar’s wantonness might have been especially for him.</p>
<p>He wonders about Adar. Adar had never seemed remotely concerned about being kidnapped. </p>
<p>But before he thinks further on that a great wave of arousal hits him, like the black root has somehow gotten stronger. He thinks instead of Adar and Jewel fighting over him, begging for his dick, kneeling before him, wanting to suck him, pleading to be the one he fucked. </p>
<p>He moaned so hard and long at that thought he almost went to his knees, the cage the only thing holding him up. </p>
<p>When Jewel returns he is still moaning. He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He is sobbing with desperation. When Jewel comes close to the cage he says, “Please.” His voice is a broken scrape from screaming. He doesn’t know how long he screamed and begged in the empty room.</p>
<p>Jewel opens that cage, cooing, “Oh, my love, come here. Come to me.” And takes Piff in his arms and guides him to the bed. He doesn’t remove the rope. Instead he lies Piff on his back and climbs on top of him. </p>
<p>He pauses with his hole almost touching Piff’s straining dick. Piff shudders.</p>
<p>“Ask me nicely,” Jewel says flashing a smile, a cruel smile.</p>
<p>Piff swallows. “Please, my lord.”</p>
<p>Above him Jewel seems to flash gold in the candlelight. Piff is so desperate to come he can’t keep still on the bed. He writhes. He needs something soon. He feels like he’s losing his mind. “You are very polite, little soldier,” says Jewel. “Did you beg like this for the Prince to suck you?”</p>
<p>“Hardly,” Piff manages, through a haze. “He begged for me.”</p>
<p>Jewel’s mouth is a hard line, but he says, “That, at least is some consolation,” as, with an ease and grace Piff is used to, he mounts Piff, slides upon him. He’s oiled and stretched and ready and the heat of his body feel like fire on Piff’s desperate dick.</p>
<p>Piff almost sobs again with need at the feel of it and Jewel cups his jaw as he moves on Piff’s dick. “It’s alright, little soldier. We’ve been through so much to be together, but we’re here now. We’re back together now.”</p>
<p>It doesn’t take long. PIff is so wound up and desperate, he almost ashamed of how quickly he climaxes inside Jewel, too soon to see to Jewel’s pleasure.</p>
<p>But Jewel doesn’t seem to mind. He curls himself around Piff’s body, humming happily to himself. It all feels good, safe and sweet. Even with Jewel’s strange metal eyes. Jewel does not free Piff’s wrists from their rope.</p>
<p>Piff says, “What happened to you, after I left, please tell me. Your eyes?”</p>
<p>“Sweet little solider,” Jewel says. “I let King Dia take my eyes. He could tell I found you beautiful and it eased his pain to know I could no longer look on you with them.”</p>
<p>“And so you can’t see me?”</p>
<p>“I can’t look on you with those eyes,” says Jewel.</p>
<p>“Did you do it to save me?”</p>
<p>“Yes. When I saw you take those lashes I knew I had to find a way. So, I persuaded my king to use you to get what he’s always wanted. When that alone was not enough to persuade him, I added my eyes to the deal.”</p>
<p>“Why is Adar what the King most wants? What is he really for? He has magical abilities did you know?”</p>
<p>Piff feels Jewel freeze. He shouldn’t have said it, he knows, but he had to. He needs to know where Adar is. He needs to know he’s safe.</p>
<p>Piff is sure Jewel is about to do something to him, to return him to the cage, perhaps, but before he can the door of the tower room smashes open and in the doorway is King Dia, a small knot of royal guards at his back. </p>
<p>“Sire,” says Jewel from the bed, like a pleasant greeting. His voice is low and seductive. His gold eyes bright.</p>
<p>“Where is he?” Dia barks. “Where is Adar?”</p>
<p>Piff thinks for a second how odd, that Dia is asking he question he wanted to ask, but he doesn’t have time to consider that further, because Dia is across the room, up on the bed and has a sword point at Piff’s neck. “Where is he?” Dia says again, says to Piff.</p>
<p>“I don’t…” Piff tries. “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“I too him to bed. Took him once and he vanished from under me. Melted like fucking ice. So where is he?” Dia jabs at Piff’s neck with the sword. Naked with his wrists still roped, there is little Piff can do about it. </p>
<p>“Really. I don’t know. I don’t.”</p>
<p>“Did you plan this?” Dia snarls. “Did you make a plot with that creature?”</p>
<p>Piff shakes his head. “He has magical powers. If he vanished he likely used them.”</p>
<p>“He does not have the power of human transportation. He escaped.” </p>
<p>“I’ve been here, with Jewel. I’ve been in that cage.” Piff nods across the room at the cage leaning against the far wall.</p>
<p>Dia looks at cage, then back to Piff. “It’s treason either way boy.” </p>
<p>The sword is gone from Piff’s neck, as Dia raises it. Piff looks up. </p>
<p>
  <i>Does he mean to take his head, here, as he lies naked in bed, still soiled from love making?</i>
</p>
<p>Piff closes his eyes. </p>
<p>But the sword blow never comes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff blinks his eyes open. He doesn’t know where he is, but everything is so bright. </p>
<p>
  <i>Is he dead?</i>
</p>
<p>He is unsure. He decides not to think about that. Instead, he notices he is lying on a carpet. And he’s looking up a vaulted ceiling. A face appears, blocking the ceiling from view. </p>
<p>White, silver…</p>
<p>“Adar?” Piff checks himself. “Your Highness?”</p>
<p>Adar comes into focus enough that Piff can see him wrinkle his nose. “There you are my dear brute. I told father him he had to bring you too. I can’t live without you. And now they all know why.”</p>
<p>“What?” Piff says, but realising as he says that his wrists are still bound behind him, but he manages to press them into the floor and sit up. As he looks around at the high, raised table set before him, the receiving hall he is in, the richly dressed court officials, looking down at him from the table, he realises, more slowly than he should, that he is naked.</p>
<p>Adar is next to him, bent over him, a hand on his bare shoulder. There are windows behind the table facing him. That’s why it’s so bright in here. Wasn’t it night? A moment ago? Through the windows he can see… glass mountains? Perpetua.</p>
<p>He’s back in Bow.</p>
<p>“Adar?” he says, slowly, looking at him.</p>
<p>Adar doesn’t reply, he smirks and nods at the table, mouthing, “My father.” Piff looks to the people there. Runi Assam, he recognises, and with him, a man in white, skin as silver as Adar’s, but less human somehow, more slender, spiky and wild-looking, that must be Myr of the North, the half fey wizard, Runi Assam’s consort. How could anyone see him with Adar and not realise they were related? That he was Adar’s real father.</p>
<p>He remembers then, conversations overheard at that ball. Myr of the North never appears in public anymore. </p>
<p>It is Myr who speaks first, leaning forward across the table. His long pale fingers seem to sparkle. “I believe you are the man who kidnapped my son.” Piff looks at Adar, whose, smile grows wider as Myr continues. “Did you really think I’d let you do that? My only son? Did you really think I didn’t have him tethered.”</p>
<p>Adar loudly, “Excuse me, <i>tethered</i>!”</p>
<p>But of course he was. And of course Adar knew he was. That was why he was so relaxed about being kidnapped. He knew Myr would rescue him. He knew he couldn’t really be taken, be in danger. Carefully, working around his bound wrists, ignoring his lack of clothes, Piff gets to his feet and says, “I am sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you. I had no choice, sir. It was a punishment mission.”</p>
<p>“I know you didn’t have a choice,” says Runi Assam. He has a kind face. He does not look particularly clever. People say, even Piff has heard, he’s one of the greatest minds in the world. “I understand the way that King Dia’s operates. He would have taken the simplest and most brutal route to what he wanted. Protection form Callisto. I know he wanted to use Adar as leverage to force Bow to defend Caen. But we simply can’t have people kidnapping the Prince of Bow. Even if they are forced to.” Runi smiles a tiny, half-hidden smiles, like he finds the situation a little amusing, but is trying to hide it.  </p>
<p>“Are you going to execute me?” Piff says, thinking they surely must. But would Jewel allow it? How many executions will he go through in his lifetime.</p>
<p>But Adar responds before anyone else can. “<i>No!</i>” He looks at Myr. “Father, you can’t let him. We can’t kill him.”</p>
<p>Myr turns an icy stare on Adar. “Prince Adar, address me by my title.”</p>
<p>“Myr of the North,” says Adar, firmly, only slightly mockingly. “Prince of Fey, Prince of Sorrows, Prince of Tears, you know who he is. You can’t just kill him. He’s the one.”</p>
<p>Runi Assam begins, “I have no intention of…”</p>
<p>But Myr leans across the table, peering at Piff and says, “Yes, this soldier is the one who awakened his magic?”</p>
<p>Runi looks hard at Piff too. “Is this correct?”</p>
<p>“That’s him,” says Adar. “I thought it had to be someone you loved, but I’d just met him.” Adar shrugs in a studied, elegant way, with a slight pout. Piff can’t help thinking how attractive he looks when he does that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Myr and Runi exchange glances and then Myr says, “We don’t know how it works. You should be aware of that, Adar, you of all people. We don’t know why some people…” He trails off, then says, “I am the only child of a human and a fey that we know of. You are probably the only quarter fey that has ever existed. Until I saw the wounds on those palace guards, I didn’t know for sure that you would even have magical powers of your own.”</p>
<p>“But I do,” Adar says proudly. “So need to write me off just yet.”</p>
<p>Myr starts to argue with Adar, but Piff is distracted, as, finally, and it seems to have taken far longer than it properly should have, a page appears beside Piff and unties his wrists then drapes him in a large piece of yellow fabric. Piff thanks him and finally relaxes enough to say, “Please, Lord of the North, Chancellor, I can only apologise for what happened. Truly I do not know what it means that I awakened Adar’s magic, but I must tell you, you cannot keep me. I cannot stay here. You must return me. to Caen.”</p>
<p>And who knows what awaited him there other than Dia’s sword, but he is sure, sure that Jewel would never have allowed that to happen. Jewel was angry enough that he might have made Piff taste death again, but Piff would not die if Jewel did not want him to. And Piff certainly should not be back in Bow, back with Adar. He is sure that when Jewel finds out about this, if Jewel doesn’t know already, he won’t be the only one facing Jewel’s wrath. He thinks of that girl, years ago, her broken arm.</p>
<p>“We cannot send you home,” says Myr. “You kidnapped my son.”</p>
<p>“How come you are allowed to call me your son, but I can’t call you father?”</p>
<p>“You will be silent, Adar,” Myr says, and Piff says quickly right afterwards, “I understand, but its not a good idea, sir, to keep me. You must return me to Jewel.”</p>
<p>Adar suddenly spits out, “Jewel. The King’s whore? You want to go back and be with the King’s whore? I am <i>wounded</i>!”</p>
<p>“Dia told you about Jewel?” Piff says to Adar. Then, “What did he do to you? How long were you with him.”</p>
<p>“He was a gentleman if that’s your concern,” says Adar. “But he did explain the situation, how I could be part of his Harem. I said yes. I thought it might be fun to be part of a King’s Harem.”</p>
<p>“<i>Adar!</i>” Myr says, which does stop Adar talking. Then he says to Piff. “Tell me about Jewel.”</p>
<p>Piff begins. He tells them all of it. As much as he can…</p>
<p>And as he talks it starts to rain outside. The rain gets harder and harder until it almost drowns out what Piff is saying. The room is not longer bright. It’s got much darker outside. Thunder cracks the sky. </p>
<p>Piff says, shouts, “And I know this sounds strange, but I think that might be him. The weather. I think it’s him. He’s coming.”</p>
<p>“Sadly,” Myr says, “That not sound strange at all. Solider, this situation maybe very serious. I need to speak with the Chancellor about it. You will be taken to the dungeons until we decide what must be done.”</p>
<p>PIff nods. He has no idea what they can possibly do, especially if Jewel is causing that thunder storm, but a cell doesn’t sound bad, being alone in a cell, sleeping perhaps - it doesn’t sound bad at all.”</p>
<p>“Father, Lord of Tears,” says Adar. “Why don’t I take him to my chambers. He won’t escape, I assure you.”</p>
<p>Myr looks at Adar, then at Piff. “Am I to understand that this immensely powerful creature is enraged by you lying with Prince Adar?”</p>
<p>Piff swallows. “I believe so.”</p>
<p>“Indeed. Then I think you ought to be in separate rooms.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Piff sits in the cell under the Palace at Bright Water. He leans his back against the wall and closes his eyes. It’s dark. It’s nice. He feels more at rest than he has since he was captured with Jewel and sentenced to death. His eyes are still closed when he hears a clattering noise in front of him. He opens them to see that on the floor in front of him is a small dagger. He looks at it suspiciously. </p>
<p>“Jewel?” he says to the stone walls.</p>
<p>There’s no reply but a small piece of paper floats down from ceiling. Piff is not a great reader, but he can make out what the note says. <i>Hurt yourself</i></p>
<p>“Jewel?” he says again.</p>
<p>He looks back at the note. Under the two word message is what he thinks is a letter A. </p>
<p>So Adar. Why did he want him to…?</p>
<p>Piff picks up the dagger and uses the point to nick his thumb. He grunts softly at the pains and brings the sore spot to his mouth. He sucks it and, as he does, there is Adar. There in the cell. </p>
<p>Adar looks at Piff and shakes his head. “You just cut your thumb? I thought you were tough?”</p>
<p>“What did you want me to do?”</p>
<p>Adar rolls his eyes, “Stab yourself in the heart, my brute.” He laughs and comes to sit down next to Piff. “Sorry you’re in here,” he says then, “I did try.” He sounds like he means it.</p>
<p>“Why do you want me to do that?”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Hurt myself? Stab myself in the heart?”</p>
<p>“Dumb brute,” Adar thumps Piff’s upper arm. “If you are hurt I get magic from it. It worked. I could feel it. And next thing I knew I could do transference. Never done it before. I don’t know why, but that’s how it works. It works the same with father and Runi Assam. But they’re married, so I suppose it makes sense that Runi awakens father’s magic. But for me, it’s you. Just some muscle guy.”</p>
<p>“You can do magic when I’m hurt?”</p>
<p>“That’s right. That’s how it works. That’s what awakened it in the garden. Those men beating you. But that’s good. It means they can’t execute you for kidnapping me. They need you. Because they really want me to be able to do magic.”</p>
<p>“They might but… You can’t have me though. I belong to…” He hasn’t said it before. “I belong to Jewel.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Before The Great Tyrant invaded, my father tried to charge the wards that his father had erected around Bow with the help of the fey. You know, before the fey killed him for fun. It was very difficult that job. He nearly lost himself trying to do it. In the end Runi had to, do things, pretty gross things to give him enough power.” Adar gives Piff a look that suggests he knows exactly what those things were.</p>
<p>“Runi Assam?” says Piff. “Lord Chancellor of Bow?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. In the end, he did charge the wards but there were gaps in them, and so The Great Tyrant still invaded. And now, to protect against Calisto, they want new wards that surround all of Netheredge, but father wasn’t strong enough to make them. So…, wait, let me explain further back, my father’s mother is the queen, the queen of the fey in Perpetua.”</p>
<p>“She’s the queen? Your grandmother is the queen of the fey?”</p>
<p>Adar cracks a grin. “That’s right. And she banged my dad’d dad, Goren of the North, the famous wizard, thinking there was no way a human could make a fey pregnant, but, whoops, <i>there’s my father</i>. And as far as anyone knows he’s the only one. The only hybrid ever, but who knows because not every fey lives in Perpetua. And what happened was because, unlike the fey, he was part human and could feel, you know empathy and stuff, this thing where fey like human suffering, kind of came out in him like he got power when people he really loved got hurt, and that’s Runi. But he, my father, he didn’t have enough power create a ward big enough to protect all of Bow, so…,” Adar trails of, licking his bottom lip.</p>
<p>Piff stares at him. “<i>You</i>,” he says after a pause. “He had you, had a child, to give him enough power to create the ward.”</p>
<p>Adar gives a little nod of his head like he’s taking a bow. “It’s clever, apparently, because the queen is my mother, so I’m part of the royal line, tied to the land. Runi is big on all of that. So he was meant to get all this power from me.”</p>
<p>“But did he think,” Piff’s voice is heavy. “That hurting you would give him the power.”</p>
<p>Adar responds to this by climbing into Piff’s lap, twining his arms around Piff’s neck, kissing his nose. “It’s so sweet you care about me. I don’t think they ever planned to hurt me on purpose. No one’s ever been clear about the long term plan.” Adar breaks off, looking at Piff’s face. “You look horrified. They were desperate you know. If Calisto takes Bow…”</p>
<p>“But they bred you… for magic?”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t.” Adar pats Piff’s cheek. “Anyway it didn’t work. I was born and there they all were in the bed chamber, my beautiful mother all pale and spent, my father, I mean, Charna, my other father, I guess he went along with it, and Myr and Runi and they wait for my cry and… nothing. It didn’t do anything. They kept trying until I was five or so, rushing me to my father if I tripped or cut a tooth, but… My father is half fey and his emotions don’t always work how you’d expect.”</p>
<p>Piff stares at Adar’s face. “You think it didn’t work because he doesn’t love you?”</p>
<p>Adar shrugs another of his pretty shrugs. His mouth is a line. “I like to think this exceptionally traumatic story excuses some of my poor behaviour.”</p>
<p>“So what happens now? How are they going to make the wards?” </p>
<p>“The idea was to wait for my magical ability to manifest and hope that would be… I don’t know. <i>Helpful</i>. That wasn’t going well until… well, you.”</p>
<p>That makes Piff smile. Maybe he just wants something to make him smile. “Is that…? Are you alright? Is everything alright? Now you have power.”</p>
<p>Softly Adar says, “It might be. I hope they find a way to keep you is all.”</p>
<p>Piff thinks of Jewel. Is there still a storm outside? He slides his arms closer around Adar and says, “Me too.”</p>
<p>Adar moves a fraction closer and they are kissing. </p>
<p>Adar is softer than Piff has ever seen him. His eyes glitter like he’s close to tears. He lets his head fall back and Piff kisses marks onto his neck. His skin tastes of salt. </p>
<p>Adar bites Piff’s jaw, his ear, and then says, “Now, please, brute, will you make love to me? Have I asked you enough times? You are the only good thing I have in this world.”</p>
<p>It is a matter of moments for Piff to shed the yellow fabric he’s wrapped in. He tosses it aside and Adar gasps, like he didn’t see him naked less than an hour ago. </p>
<p>He’s lying back on the floor of the cell, still dressed, but spreading himself there, offering himself to Piff. Piff climbs onto his body and begins on the fastenings of his doublet, Adar’s fingers joining his to get it off quicker. It’s gone and followed by a shirt and breeches and then Adar is naked, all silver skin and burn scars, open on the floor and Piff can hardly bear the sight of him.</p>
<p>“You are beautiful,” is what he says. It doesn’t feel adequate.</p>
<p>“I’m a fairy prince, you terrible brute.”</p>
<p>“That you are,” Piff says and, unable to resist any longer he lowers himself, presses his face between Adar’s legs and slips his tongue over his hole.</p>
<p>Adar yells at the first touch of Piff’s tongue, so Piff does it again. He’s done this so many times. He’s been trained to do this as he was trained to fight. He swipes his tongue over Adar’s hole again and again, twists at him, lathes him into such frenzy it takes both of Piff’s hands, hard on his thighs, to keep him still. He fucks his tongue into Adar until he can hear Adar sobbing and sobbing. He adds a finger alongside his tongue, crooks it inside, adds a second, tongue outside, teasing the rim of him, fingers inside beckoning him, and Adar, finally, in a broken sounding croak, says, “Oh, fuck, please. <i>Please,</i>”</p>
<p>That sounds like an invitation and Piff moves, unfolds and curls up. His dick is hard, dripping, slippery. He doesn’t have anything like the violet scented lotion Jewel always likes to slick him with, but everything feels so wet and open, he doesn’t think it will matter. He slides into Adar slow, watching him screw up his pretty face and gasp. It’s tight but it’s horribly good. </p>
<p>Adar’s eyes snap open as Piff fills him completely. He makes a sound that could be a word, but Piff can’t tell. As he draws back and fucks in again and then again, he thinks it might be <i>brute</i>.</p>
<p>Piff kisses the side of Adar’s face, coos in his ear that he’s beautiful, so beautiful. And Adar just keens and sobs onto his shoulder, scratching marks over the scars on his back and dropping tears onto his skin.</p>
<p>Adar glitters in the dark and comes suddenly, dick jerking between their bodies. Piff is there behind him, shouting pleasure into Adar’s damp flesh. </p>
<p>As Piff collapses, hot and sticky onto Adar, the whole cell seems to flash white for a moment, as if a lightening struck right in there with them. When Piff says, “What was that?” </p>
<p>Adar says, “I think it was you.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>When they are called back to the hall, thunder storm still raging outside, sky almost black, neither Runi Assam, nor Myr, says anything about Adar being in Piff’s cell, instead, Myr says, “When we were occupied by Zagor, The Great Tyrant, he told us many boastful stories, including one about his visit to The Harem of Caen, where he challenged them for the Ruby. He asked me to guess what it was he’d asked for. Can you guess, Lord Piff?”</p>
<p>“I not a…” Piff begins, then says, “No sir.”</p>
<p>“He said he’s asked to lie with a god.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Piff feels cold inside. He understands the point of this story instantly. Feels, perhaps as if he always knew. “Jewel,” he says, quietly.</p>
<p>Myr looks at him. “A sun god, I would imagine, from your description.”</p>
<p>“That,” Piff says slowly, “that seems like it could be true.”</p>
<p>Next to him, Adar squeezes his hand in excitement. “You’re the beloved of a sun god,” he says, full of delight. “Don’t you love that father. You go to all that trouble to breed your perfect magical child and I’m a complete failure, meanwhile this random son of a whore can command a sun god.”</p>
<p>“Adar, I can’t command anything.”</p>
<p>“As I am sure my son has told you by now, you, the power you awaken in him, maybe our only chance to build defensive wards bu combining his power with mine. As his power is dependant on you we must break your bond with the sun god.”</p>
<p>“You can do that?”</p>
<p>“Me, no. I do not have the power to challenge a sun god. But there is someone who might be able to.” He pauses, carefully. “My mother.”</p>
<p>Next to Myr, Runi Assam says gently, “<i>Myr</i>.” His hand slides across the table and slips around Myr’s fingers. </p>
<p>Myr seems to be shaking. “I need you to come with us Lord Piff and I need you to help us and if you do this, in return, I will extend the wards we build to Caen and you will be a hero in your country.”</p>
<p>Piff nods. What else can he do?</p>
<p>“You’ll love my grandmother,” says Adar. “I take after her.”</p>
<p>“Adar you have never met her,” says Myr.</p>
<p>“I know, but I’m assuming.”</p>
<p>Myr looks at Adar and he’s seems like he might be smiling. “You’re only a quarter fey,” he says. “She’s never seen such a thing. She might slay you as an abomination.”</p>
<p>“Grandmother would never. She’ll adore me.”</p>
<p>Piff takes a step toward the table. “Sir, can the Queen of the Fey really defeat Jewel.” His heart is pounding with the idea of it.</p>
<p>Outside the black windows, thunder cracks.</p>
<p>Runi Assam leans forward, “It’s our only hope, Lord Piff,” he says. “But there are two humans who have been to Perpetua. I’m the only one the fey didn’t murder.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Adar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is not the last chapter. Sorry. But the next one is coming soon.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Runi Assam, the Chancellor of Bow and the Northern Lands takes Piff’s arm and leads him out of the room, down a flagged corridor and into a small study. He offers Piff a chair and sits himself at his desk. The room is candlelit. A clock ticks.  </p><p>“Perpetua,” Runi says on a soft breath, “is a strange place for a human. I wasn’t born here. I wasn’t born poor, but I wasn’t born in a palace and the idea that I could end up here, in charge of so much, is incredible.”</p><p>He smiles. He’s a comforting looking man with his red beard and wide shoulders. He wears a cloak and a chain of office and he looks like someone who is calmly satisfied with his life. Even in the eye of this strange storm. He is supposed to be very wise. Perhaps it is his wisdom that gives him that sense of calm.</p><p>“But none of this,” Runi continues, leaning closer, “is strange compared to the handful of days I spent in Perpetua.”</p><p>“So you’ve really been there before?” </p><p>Piff thought the only human being to ever travel to Perpetua was Goren of the North, father of the Lord of Magic.</p><p>“Once,” Runi smiles a wide-mouthed smile, “and as I say, it was, an experience.” </p><p>“A bad one?” Piff cannot imagine what this place can be like. Can it really be more strange than what he has already experienced? Being whipped to death and surviving? Adar’s magic? Jewel tormenting him with unseeing golden eyes. When had his life become so strange? When he’s met Jewel at 14? When he’d taken his token to him at 17? </p><p>
  <i>Had that really been less than a year ago?</i>
</p><p>Runi says, “I think my stay in Perpetua was one of the greatest times of my life. But I was young and I was in love. Very deeply in love. It may not be so easy this time.”</p><p>“Why?” Piff frowns. “Are you, are you not in love?”</p><p>Runi’s smile becomes something like secret code. “Oh I am that. I love Myr with all that I am. There’s no one like him in the world and he is my heart. But, nevertheless, Perpetua may be a challenge. For both of us. There are two things, really. That I must tell you. First the light can blind you. It bounces off the glass mountains and…” Runi tails off, sounding a little dreamy. “I saw it once. The sunlight in Perpetua. My eyes are… I do not see so well. Haven’t ever since. But in a strange way, I feel like I’ve seen more than most people will in a lifetime. However, I think you should wear a blindfold. And I will. I don’t want to lose the sight I have left.”</p><p>“A blindfold. I see.” The idea of being blind frightens Piff. The vulnerability. The thought that if Jewel follows them there he will be even more defenceless. “And Myr, will he wear one? And Adar.” The image flashes into his mind then of Adar, blindfolded and helpless. Strapped to a bed, face down, ass up. Needy for dick, but able to even know where to beg.</p><p>Runi is smiling sweetly at him. But he can’t know what he just thought about his… his son? His step son? </p><p>He simply says, “Myr does not need the blindfold. I think we will have to see with Adar. Hopefully not.”</p><p>“I see. But I will be blind all the time.”</p><p>“You can remove it at night. If we can leave soon we will arrive with some hours of darkness to become accustomed. However, the second thing, this is far more complex than the matter of the blindfold. Coupling in Perpetua, they pair bond, they believe in the power in the pairing, like we do in Bow, but unlike Bow the pairing is strictly based on complimentary satisfactions… Lord Piff, have you in Caen, ever been to a Red House?”</p><p>“No, sir.”</p><p>“But you are aware, how do they say it in Caen, of being Under and being Lord. Of playing those parts?” </p><p>“Oh yes, sir.”</p><p>“And with Adar, you are Lord?”</p><p>Piff sifts awkwardly. “Er, yes. I suppose. In some ways.” </p><p>“So, with Myr and I, he is Lord.”</p><p>Piff presses his lips together and nods. He is sure he is starting to blush.</p><p>“In Perpetua, that isn’t just in the bedroom. It’s all the time. You will be, expected to be capable of mastering Adar. Completely and at all times.”</p><p>Piff opens and closes his mouth once or twice before he says, “I’m not sure if I…”</p><p>Runi nods like he understands. “It is a lot to ask. His father is talking to him. With luck he will co-operate. I think he understands how important this is. Now if you would please leave. I must change. And, I suppose, we should find you something more, dignified to wear.”</p><p>Piff looks down. He is still draped in the yellow fabric. He’d half forgotten.</p>
<hr/><p>Piff is sent to a dressing room where he is given some tight fitting leather breeches, a shirt and a silver grey doublet rather like a larger version of the one Adar was wearing the night they met. When he is dressed, he is taken to a small corridor where Myr is waiting, sitting on a long settle, one thin leg crossed over the other. His silverish skin seems to glisten a little - blue and green - in the candles lighting the room. He pats a spot next to him. “Lord Piff, wait here with me.”</p><p>Piffs takes a seat, realising they are facing a door. From behind the door he can hear, distinctly, Adar. He is saying, “Uncle Runi. How could you suggest such a thing. You, my own dear father’s lover and here you are suggesting I dress like a whore.”</p><p>Piff isn’t sure where to look. And then Myr suddenly says, “My son thinks I don’t care for him. That Runi and I bred him for our own magical purposes and then, when he didn’t have the results we wanted, handed him over to Verne and Charna and claimed he was their child. He thinks I don’t love him as a father.”</p><p>Piff says simply, “Yes. He does.”</p><p>From behind the door Adar shrieks. “I’m basically naked.”</p><p>“He makes it hard,” Myr says. “However, I would give my life for that boy. Just as I would for Runi. Human emotion, it is a very strange thing. But I do love my son. If you get the chance, perhaps you could tell him.”</p><p>“I’ll try, sir,” says Piff. As he hears Adar say, a little softer, “Uncle Runi, did my father do <i>that</i>?”</p><p>Myr raises his voice. “Do you love him. My son?”</p><p>Piff doesn’t reply and then, from behind the door Adar shouts, “Are you out there, my beautiful brute. Wait until you see me. I’m dressed like such a slut.”</p><p>Piff smiles to himself. He can’t really help it. He thinks of Adar, his slight body, his strange silverish glow, the way his light eyes glitter when he looks at him. He says, “I think, sir, that I do.”</p><p>Myr takes a soft breath. “Good. It will help.”</p><p>A few moments pass. Myr stretches out his long legs. His clothes are all white leather. His boots are silver. Piff feels a little awkward beside him, lumpen and large. Myr must be in his 40s. But he doesn’t look any real age at all. He isn’t exactly attractive, but he’s oddly compelling. Pale and powerful. Piff wonder if Runi’s easy air of contentment is down to him.</p>
<hr/><p>When the door of the room opposite opens, Runi comes out first. He is wearing almost nothing. A tiny hip cloth and a delicate silver collar. His chest is soft and hairless, freckled and worn. His expression is sweetly sheepish. </p><p>His body is <i>covered</i> in marks. There are bite marks on his chest and shoulders, bruises around his neck. There are welts, some old, some very new, on his back and his thighs. Piff glances away from him, looks down at the floor. But quickly realises, Runi is barely aware he’s standing there.</p><p>Because, next to him, Myr has got to his feet, catching his breath, saying, “Well, that brings back some memories.” He’s beside Runi now, touching the edge of the tiny hip cloth.</p><p>Runi says, “I enjoyed this more when I was 22, I think.”</p><p>Myr’s voice is a broken gasp, ”You still look beautiful. I can barely believe you’re still mine.”</p><p>“You know I am, Lord of Magic,” says The Chancellor of Bow and the Northern Lands and Myr leans in and kisses Runi, and Runi responds melting into his arms.</p><p>From behind them comes Adar’s voice, shouting, “No, no, no, no, brute…” He appears from behind Myr and Runi, dressed in the same tiny hip cloth. Piff’s mouth goes dry. “Brute,” he says, crossing the corridor, “distract me from <i>that</i>.”</p><p>He slides himself onto Piff’s lap, twining his arms around his neck. “They are always like this and it is so embarrassing,” Adar says as he leans in for a kiss.</p><p>Piff can’t help it. Adar is practically naked in his lap and his mouth tastes good. Piff’s hard. His dick pressing up between them and into Adar’s belly.</p><p>Adar looks down. “Oh. I assume this is because you like the outfit. I suppose you were bound to be a man of simple tastes.” He nips Piff’s bottom lip and Piff groans.</p><p>“As I was saying,” Myr says over Adar’s shoulder. “You will be expected to be capable of mastering my son. If you want the fey to take us seriously?”</p><p>Piff looks at him. Adar is squirming in his lap.</p><p>
  <i>This is going to be a disaster.</i>
</p><p>“Can’t he master me?” Piff says.</p><p>“He is of the fey. He is what he is,” Myr says to Piff. Then to Adar, “Try not to make it difficult.” </p><p>Adar swivels in Piff’s lap. “I want nothing more than to be brought to me knees by him father, you know that.”</p><p>Myr nods. “Lord Piff. I think it’s time you treated my son more cruelly. Take him in the dressing room. We have a little time.”</p>
<hr/><p>The room behind the door is small with wood panelled walls, a thick rug on the floor, a couple of chairs and a mirror. Piff stands facing Adar. He still has his hands on his bare waist. Touching Adar feels so good. So right.</p><p>“What should I do?” Piff’s voice is shaky. </p><p>Adar laughs. “Dumb brute. Just do what you want to me,” Adar’s voice drops. It’s low and soft when he says, “<i>please</i>.” He stares at Piff with a bitten lip.</p><p>Piff swallows. He’s hard at the idea of it. Carefully he says, “Then get, get on your knees.” </p><p>Adar does it without a word, lips slightly parted. He licks them wet and Piff’s whole body jolts with arousal. Kneeling on the floor, almost naked, Adar looks up at Piff with big silver eyes. Piff reaches out and touches Adar’s face. He rubs his cheek with his thumb and Adar keens softly, leaning forward and ghosting his lips over Piff’s leather covered dick.</p><p>Piff says heavily, “Do you want it?” He rolls his hips as he speaks, jerking his hard dick against Adar’s panting mouth.</p><p>“Fuck. <i>Please</i>.” </p><p>“You know,” Piff says, taking a handful of Adar’s silver hair, “you don’t deserve it. The way you behave. You don’t really deserve anything.”</p><p>His voice sounds different. He feels different. His dick is harder than he thinks he’s ever been and he wants nothing so much as Adar’s clever mouth wrapped around his dick. But denying Adar what he wants so desperately, is somehow, even better. </p><p>Piff feels it in his spine, in his guts, when Adar whines, “I know. But Lord Piff, please. Please.”</p><p>“Call me that again.”</p><p>Adar’s expression changes. He’s suddenly cocky again when he says, “You’re not a real lord.”</p><p>Piff twists his handful of Adar’s hair savagely tight, snarls out, “I’m your fucking lord.”</p><p>Adar shudders. He tips his head back showing Piff his throat. “Yes,” he whispers, thick with arousal. “Yes you are. Lord Piff. <i>My</i> Lord. Please let me have your dick in my mouth.”</p><p>Piff starts to unfasten his breeches with one hand, keeping the other fisted tight in Adar’s hair, not letting him get close enough even though he’s whining hard. “This is what you want,” Piff mutters, “this is what you’ve wanted all along isn’t it? To be put on your knees. To be treated like a slut. Made to beg for my dick.”</p><p>He slackens his grip on Adar’s hair a little a rubs his dick on Adar’s face. He’s so hard. It feels so good. And Adar is moaning, “Yes, please, yes.” Looking up at him with big desperate eyes, he says, “My lord, please, hit me first.” He says it as even the words are too arousing to bear. “Hit me, please.”</p><p>Piff forces Adar’s head further back and regards him. “I thought this was about what I wanted, Your Highness?”</p><p>Even from the depths of his needy arousal, Adar manages a familiar smile. “You don’t want to hit me?”</p><p>Piff wants to hit Adar so much the idea of it is almost too much, like if he thinks too hard on it, he’ll snap his hips and come untouched over Adar’s face. And he doesn’t want that. He wants to come in Adar’s hot soft mouth. He wants to force it down his throat and see his silver eyes water.</p><p>Piff was trained as a Harem Guard in Caen. It’s not an easy job. In the Harem people are drunk and violent, more than half the workers in the houses are slaves. Growing up Piff was drilled and drilled. He can fight with a sword, a dagger and he can fight with his fists. He could probably knock Adar unconscious with one blow right now. But that isn’t what he wants to do. And that isn’t what Adar wants him to do. Although he suspects Adar might like to know he <i>could</i> do that.</p><p>He slaps Adar’s face, cracks it hard with an open palm. Adar gasps. It was a savage hit. An Adar’s response is to gently touch the red mark blooming on his cheek, staring at Adar with desperate eyes.</p><p>Piff snarls and shoves his dick down Adar’s throat without giving him a chance to catch his breath.</p><p>Adar looks so good sucking dick, even better with a bruised face and glassy eyes. He gags and struggles as Piff forces himself deeper, but he can’t do much. He’s held and helpless and Piff is much too strong. </p><p>It’s quick, sudden, when Piff finds himself coming down Adar’s throat with a shout of pleasure. He barely waits a moment before he drops to his knees and kisses Adar’s filthy mouth, tasting the seed he hasn’t swallowed. </p><p>“Is this,” Piff whispers into his mouth. “Is this what you want from me.”</p><p>Adar nods down at his own lap. Piff looks. Adar’s hip cloth is tangled about his waist. His dick is there, spent, his seed drying on his thighs. He’d come untouched. When? When he was hit? When Piff forced him down onto his dick. “From the moment I first saw you. When I look at you, I can’t think of anything other than, you hitting me and forcing me to obey you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Piff says, mouth dry, then, “You look beautiful like this.” He reaches down, pushes a finger through Adar’s spend, brings it to his mouth and licks it.</p><p>Adar smiles, “You’re disgusting, you know that?”</p><p>“Do you want to beg from my dick again?”</p><p>“You know I do.”</p><p>They are interrupted by a sudden knock on the door. And Runi’s voice saying, “Lord Piff, can I come in. I have a blindfold for you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Perpetua</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Piff doesn’t remember how he got here. He remembers being back in Runi’s study, Adar holding his hand. And Myr, did he say something? Or wave his hands? It’s a blank</p><p>And now he’s lying on what feels like a sheet of glass. And he’s wearing a blindfold. And the air around him is very cold. The glass - if it is glass - is like ice. Is it ice? There’s a sound in the air like bells are ringing very far away.</p><p>He feels Adar’s hand, still in his. And then there’s Adar’s voice saying, “Are we here? Is this it? Can I take off the blindfold?”</p><p>“You can,” that’s Myr. “But it’s close to dawn. Runi, Piff, keep your eyes covered. Adar. If you eyes start to ache, if your head aches, you put the blindfold back on.”</p><p>“Yes father,” says Adar in a familiar sing song. Piff feels Adar sit up next to him. After a moment he says, “<i>Oh!</i>”</p><p>Piff gets up, pulls up to sitting, and feels Adar press against him and whisper, “Brute, it’s beautiful.”</p><p>Another hand is on him, slender and bony <i>Myr?</i>. “Stand up,” Myr says, “you must be standing. Adar, you need to kneel, please.”</p><p>“I will if my master tells me to,” Adar says. And before Myr can say anything Piff says, “Do it, Adar.”</p><p>He can feel Adar shiver next to him. It’s nice.</p><p>The next voice he hears is high and sweet and <i>beautiful</i>. He hadn’t realised they weren’t alone.</p><p>“What is this? So my worst son has paid me a visit. Can I bear it? Last time you were here you destroyed half my palace.” <i>Myr’s mother</i>. “You <i>killed</i> The Warden of the Moonless Night.”</p><p>Myr’s voice is a little different. Sweet and silky. It sounds a little like hers as he says, “Come now, mother. I’m sure you found that entertaining. Seeing your son come into his power, must have been a delight.”</p><p>“Hmm. Perhaps,” Myr’s mother says. “And now you’re back to visit your mother, after, oh, twenty years. And you still have this creature. You still love him? That still gives you some strange unnatural power?”</p><p>“Yes mother. I still love him. I can still use my human emotion to create magical power.”</p><p>“Hmm. still him, but human ageing is quite grotesque isn’t it? I remember this with your father.”</p><p>Piff hears Runi make a sound then, like she’s just poked him. Where is Runi? He must be kneeling by Myr the way Adar is kneeling beside him. And he’s blindfolded and dressed in a tiny hip cloth like Adar. Piff shivers. This is hard enough, strange enough without having to kneel, naked and be assessed as Myr’s consort.”</p><p>Myr says, “You can’t have known my father more than a decade before you killed him.”</p><p>“I forget. But let’s not talk about who murdered who’s father.”</p><p>“You, you murdered my father.”</p><p>Adar leans close to Piff’s thigh and whispers. “They’re always like this.”</p><p>“You’ve never been here before,” Piff hisses down at him.</p><p>“You can tell.”</p><p>There’s a soft sound, a movement of air, a sudden sweet scent for a moment, as the queen approaches. Piff senses her beside them, bending down to look at Adar. Before Piff can say anything, Myr says sharply, “And, Mother, Night’s Mistress, Queen of Tears, may I present my son, Prince Adar of Bow.”</p><p>The Queen makes a sound of delight. “What an adorable little creature. And he likes to kneel. How sweet. Not too human at all, is he. He hardly looks like this one at all.” </p><p>“Mother he’s not,” Myr stammers out behind them, “Runi’s not…”</p><p>But Adar is saying, his voice also sounding sweetly fey, “Thank you grandmother.”</p><p>“Would you like to serve me, my grand prince? The Queen of Tears. The Night’s Mistress.”</p><p>“<i>Mother!</i> Please such a thing would be a great affront to humans.”</p><p>The Queen makes a barking laugh of a sound in reply. Piff fumbles around, trying to touch Adar, to protect him. He manages to place his palm on Adar’s head. Myr is saying, “And he has a consort mother. Here, Lord Piff of Caen.”</p><p><i>I’m not a Lord</i>, PIff thinks to himself but he takes a step forward and bows. </p><p>There’s a touch on his shoulder. The queen says, “I must say you are rather well formed.” </p><p>He hears Runi murmur, “If she falls for him as well I am going to give him up as a lost cause.”</p><p>But the Queen doesn’t hear, of if she does, she ignores it, saying, “I like your choice. I can see something of you in me, making such a fine selection. I imagine it is hard to find suitable humans but this one is very pleasant. You are certainly better at selecting than your father. And you like to serve. That is your inclination?”</p><p>Softly, Adar says, “I like to serve him.”</p><p>“Who wouldn’t?” The Queen says and she reaches out and touches Piff between his legs, strokes a hand over his leather covered dick.</p><p>Piff makes an embarrassing squeak of a sound. Adar laughs and says, “Well, grandmother, if you like him so much, perhaps you can have an evening with him, or you can if you solve one big problem with him.”</p><p>“Oh there is nothing wrong with him, I am certain,” says The Queen, still stroking Piff’s dick.</p><p>Myr says, “He is the chosen of a sun god.”</p><p>“Oh.” The Queen takes her hand back. Her voice is a tight bristle. “Then the sun god must agree to share . You are the consort of the fey. That can’t be thrown aside.”</p><p>There is a hush as if everyone is considering how to respond. So Piff feels he should speak. He says, “Share. He’ll never share. He is… He’s done things to me already. If he knew about this…”</p><p>“He won’t share you with a human, perhaps” the Queen says airily. “This is different. He will respect the fey and our choices. You will demonstrate it is an honour for him to lie with a human that a fey has chosen to love.”</p><p>“I don’t love him,” says Adar.</p><p>“Don’t be silly little prince,” the Queen says, and as she speaks, the ground, the glass floor, shakes. Outside, thunder.</p><p>“He’s here,” Piff says quietly. “He’s come here.” Around him there is noise. Rushing and bustle. There seem to be people all around him. A voice, another fey voice says, “Your Highness, Queen of sorrows, Queen of Tears, Queen of a Thousand Years, please. It’s a …”</p><p>“It’s a sun god,” says the Queen. “I will see him in the receiving room.</p><p>Piff feels like his stomach sinks into his knees. “You have to, you have to let him take me.”</p><p>“No, Lord Piff,” says Myr, “we can’t do that, we need you.” Myr’s hand guides him. Behind him is a chair, broad and cool, smooth like it’s also glass. As soon as Piff is seated he feels Adar climb into his lap.</p><p>Adar nuzzles and kisses Piff’s neck. “I’ll never let him take you, my brute,” he says against skin.</p><p>“Adar,” Piff hisses, voice broken panic, “he’s in here. He’s in Perpetua. Please don’t touch me. You can’t touch me.” </p><p>Adar says. “Don’t worry. I’m a fairy prince remember. I’m magical. I’m going to fight for you, my beautiful brute. If he wants to take you he’ll come through me.”</p><p>“Adar,” says Myr, “don’t be foolish. You don’t have the power to fight a sun god.”</p><p>Adar is running his hands over Piff’s back. He slides them inside his shirt. He’s touching the welts there.</p><p>“Don’t I?” says Adar. He kisses Piff on the jaw. “You were nearly flogged to death, weren’t you?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Father. What if I’d seen that. How powerful would you be if Runi was flogged so severely. Imagine what power that would give you.”</p><p>Piff can sense how Myr’s breath changes. “Once,” he says, “just the suggestion that…” he stops talking like he’s lost. </p><p>“Think about it, father. If I’d seen that. If I’d seen the flogging?”</p><p>“You didn’t.”</p><p>“But what if I had, father, what if there was a way I could.”</p><p>Runi says, “Myr, is there a way?” </p><p>Myr takes a breath. “My mother.”</p><p>Piff doesn’t know what any of this means. His flogging is over is done. And he doesn’t have time. Because the door to the room opens and the light even through his blindfold, is brighter. And a voice that makes his soul shakes, says, “And there you are, my little soldier, hiding from me.”</p><p>Adar is gone, pulled away. He makes a yelping sound. Piff can smell Jewel then. He never knew Jewel had a particular smell until that moment, when he smells it so distinctly, it’s like it slots into a place inside him, like that smell - like rain on hot stone - was missing. </p><p>“My love,” Jewel says, “Oh, my love.” Jewel’s hands then, unmistakable, Jewel’s hands on his face. Jewel’s lips on his. Jewel’s tongue in his mouth. Jewel saying, “Oh no, no. I will not have your face hidden from me, even the smallest part.” And before Piff can even <i>think</i> Jewel has ripped off his blindfold. Piff screams, thinks of the blindness that awaits him. Of Jewel’s own unseeing gold eyes. He screws his eyes shut, but the light is like knives. But then there is Jewel, and Jewel is breathing into his mouth and he can see.</p><p>He doesn’t even remember opening his eyes, but he can see. Jewel is heavier in his lap than Adar. Jewel is gold skin, beautiful muscular thighs and a gown of glittering red gems and golden lace. Jewel’s eyes are still blank, but he smiles as Piff looks at him and breathes, “Oh, my poor little solider. Snatched by the cruel fey. But I will save you.” Strong arms twine around Jewel’s neck. “I will rescue. They want me to fight for you and of course I will.”</p><p>Piff struggles to look up and see past Jewel to the room they’re in. Glittering and so bright. Like it’s made of glass. Myr is staring at them, long fingers twitching like he’s about to attack. A creature that must be Myr’s mother stands behind him in the doorway. She looks like Myr but more strange, smaller, starker. She’s smiling at him, at them, more similar creatures are at her back. Runi is kneeling beside Myr, still blindfolded, a hand on Myr’s thigh and Myr’s palm on his head. </p><p>Adar is on the floor, expression like he’s wary to get up, a pink flush in his cheeks like he’s excited. </p><p>“Yes,” says the Queen. “Jewel has agreed to battle Prince Adar for the right of consort to Lord Piff of Caen. Such a battle, between a sun god and a fey prince has never been seen.”</p><p>PIff swallows hard. “Your majesty,” he says, braver now he can see and for the fact he has Jewel in his arms. “Will it be a fight to the death. Will one of them die?”</p><p>Close and low, Jewel whispers, “Do you wish him dead my little soldier? Did he take you by force?”</p><p>Piff cannot tell if Jewel is mocking him.  And the Queen is saying, “No. The first to rescind the contest will give up claim to you.”</p><p>Piff swallows. This seems… should he say something about this? Should he object to being a prize in a tournament? He doesn’t know what to say. Or what he wants. Jewel’s hands are on his jaw. They feel so warm and good in the cold air.</p><p>Adar is on his feet. Standing firm and staring at Piff and Jewel. He looks so delicate compared to Jewel, who seems to be throbbing with power in Piff’s arms.</p><p>Myr is whispering to Queen. Runi, still blindfolded at his feet. Should Piff ask Jewel to breathe into Runi’s mouth too? He doesn’t think Runi would welcome it. </p><p>The Queen says, “I have a request from my son for a preparation for Prince Adar, before the battle. Do you have any objections, Jewel?” She says Jewel’s name a little too sweetly.</p><p>Jewel turns and slides off Piff’s lap. “None.”</p><p>“Very well.” The Queen walks over to Piff and touches him lightly on the back of his hand. </p><p>That’s all it takes. </p><p>The light in the bright room grows brighter, so bright the air seems to roar with it. The light all around his explodes silver. And he’s somewhere else.</p>
<hr/><p>Piff is on the platform in the punishment square at White Iron. He’s chained to the whipping frame. He jerks in the chains. He can feel that old ache from the night in the dungeon. He can see Jewel and Dia walking away.</p><p>
  <i>How is he back here? How?</i>
</p><p>He feels a touch, looks up and Adar’s hand is on his face. He looks up. Adar stands before him. But Adar wasn’t here.</p><p>“Adar. How?”</p><p>“We’re not here. Not really. My grandmother sent us here so I could see it.”</p><p>“Adar,” Piff says, half-snarls with pure fear. And then the whip cracks across his back. That sudden bloody blow he remembers. He yells out with pain.</p><p>He looks back to Adar. Sees his mouth is a little open, his eyes a touch more silver. “Adar,” he says. “Adar, this nearly killed me last time. I think it was only Jewel that kept me alive.”</p><p>Another lash hits. Piff screams, jerks in the chains.</p><p>“If you didn’t die then, you won’t die now,” says Adar. </p><p>Piff is panicking, but he’s held as fast as he ever was for this lashing. “Adar I can’t. I’ll be ruined.”</p><p>“You won’t. This isn’t really happening. But I need you to feel it. I need to see you feel it.”</p><p>Adar hand on Piff’s face is vibrating, the power already building. Piff looks into Adar’s eyes as the whipping continues, as sees his power grow.</p><p>“My brute,” Adar whispers. “The power I gain from this will be unimaginable. This way, I can save you from Jewel.”</p><p>Piff swallows, already alight in a blaze of pain. <i>Does he want to be saved by Adar? By Jewel?  Where does he even want to be?</i></p>
<hr/><p>When it’s over Piff finds himself back where he was. Back on the glass chair in the glass room. He’s not bleeding. His back is not laid open to the bone. He touches it, just the familiar scars. He is shaking. Body full of adrenaline, sweat still on his brow.</p><p>He looks at Jewel. But Jewel isn’t looking at him. Jewel is looking at Adar. </p><p>Everyone in the room is looking at Adar. Adar is in the middle of the glass room, <i>floating in the air</i> in the middle of the room - a glowing silver orb.</p><p>Myr and Runi are staring at him in wonder, like they are seeing the answer to their long standing prayers. Even Piff, who knows little about these things can tell Adar is intensely powerful.</p><p>And Jewel, Jewel is staring at Adar, not like he wants to fight him, or wants to work out how to defend himself against him. Jewel is starting at Adar with an expression Piff knows well.</p><p>Jewel is staring at Adar with naked desire.</p><p>“Little soldier,” Jewel says, voice full of breathy awe, “I’ve changed my mind. I think we should <i>keep</i> him.”</p>
<hr/><p>Jewel lies beside Piff on the huge white bed the queen had found for them with haste when it appeared Jewel was not planning to wait to take Adar. The walls of the room are glass, but it still feels private. Like no one is around, no one but the three of them for miles and miles. Dusk is falling. The sky all around turning pink and indigo.</p><p>Adar stands at the foot of the bed. He’s still glowing, glowing and glowing, lighting the room with his silver magic.</p><p>“So,” Adar says, swinging his hips. “Do you want me, sun god?”</p><p>Jewel growls. “Oh I do, you filthy little fairy wretch. I must have you. You are spectacular.”</p><p>Adar wets his lips, clearly relishing Jewel’s desire. </p><p>“Come here, my prince,” Jewel says, “Come here and ride my soldier. Let me see you.”</p><p>Earlier, as the sun had begun to set, Jewel had prepared Adar. Piff had watched as Adar had twisted and begged on Jewels fingers, and Jewel growled, “Don’t you dare come yet you disgusting little fairy boy.”</p><p>And Adar had breathed, “Oh yes. My master, my god.”</p><p>The whole show had made Piff iron hard. He still was. Aching to come. Ready to beg Jewel for it.</p><p>Adar climbs onto the bed and onto Piff’s cock. He slides on easy and bounces. Piff groans and Jewel says, “That’s right solider, beautiful solider. Be magnificent for me.” He looks up to Adar, naked and silver, writhing on Piff’s cock, “And you, my slut, touch your fairy tits, stroke them, show me how pretty you can be.”</p><p>Adar, nodding and pink-cheeked, strokes his chest. Run’s his hands over his silver skin, pinches his nipples and cries out, head back, throat on show.</p><p>Piff groans again. Adar’s display is deeply arousing and the way he’s moving on Piff’s cock is overwhelming. Jewel sighs. He puts his fingers on Piff’s jaw, tilts his head and slaps his face, shocking hard. Piff cries out, the pain mixing with his growing arousal. And Adar moans, glows brighter and tightens on Piff’s dick. </p><p>“F-fuck,” Piff manages. And Jewel slaps him again.</p><p>“Yes,” Adar moans out, “Yes, please. Please, hurt him.”</p><p>With a soft laugh, Jewel ducks down and bites Piff’s neck hard. The pain rolls. It’s good and bad and each piece of it makes Adar hotter and tighter. It’s so good, too good and then Jewel licks his way up to Piff’s ear, bites it and says, “Now you may come for me, my handsome solider, and know that I never once doubted you.”</p><p>Piff doubts this is true but doesn’t care as he lets the world go.</p>
<hr/><p>Later, the sky outside is dark velvet, dusted with stars, the moon glitters on the black sea and Adar is still glowing softly. Piff lies in bed, surrounded by silver and gold. Jewel’s head is on his shoulder, Adar sleeps on his belly. </p><p>Jewel strokes Adar’s hair and says to Piff, “Always love me best. You must promise me this little soldier.” He slides his hand to Adar’s throat. “I could snap this little fairy neck.” </p><p>“Jewel,” Piff says, sleepy, “he’s besotted with you.”</p><p>“I care not,” coos Jewel,  “you know what I am.”</p><p>Piff is too sleepy not to speak his mind. He says, “I didn’t ask for any of this, you know. You sent me to him. I didn’t ask for Adar to be magically connected to me in a way I don’t understand, and have been basically told not to even try and understand. I didn’t want this. But they’ve told me his magic might be the only way to stop Calisto taking Caen and Bow and that’ll be the end of everything good, probably.” </p><p>“Calisto?” says Jewel, sounding equally sleepy. “You’re going to fight Calisto?”</p><p>“I think so.”</p><p>“Then I’ll help you.”</p>
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